JAMES S. WADSWORTH 
OF GENESEO 




>)///<////,■/ , /r/lt'Uf/ /rtt//< 






JAMES S. WADSWORTH 
OF.GENESEO 

BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL OF UNITED STATES 
VOLUNTEERS 



BY 

HENRY GREENLEAF PEARSON 



WITH PORTRAITS AND MAPS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1913 






Copyright, 1913, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published June, 1913 




©CI.A347734 



PREFACE 

The documentary materials for writing the life of 
James S. Wadsworth are of the scantiest description. He 
was always a sparing letter-writer, and although during 
his service in the army he wrote regularly to members of 
his family, the letters have almost all, from one cause or 
another, suffered destruction. The story of his work in 
the Civil War, therefore — what he did in camp, on the 
field of battle, as military governor, ana in politics — must 
be traced in the printed records that deal with that time. 
Abundant as these are, it has often been only after long 
search that they have yielded up information about an 
individual who, in filling his proper place in the vast ma- 
chinery of the army, gave all his thoughts to the duties 
before him and none to the spreading of them before men. 

In view of this meagreness of printed matter bearing 
on General Wadsworth's career and of such manuscript 
records as the members of his family have been able to 
place at my disposal, I have been particularly fortunate 
in the cordial assistance that has come to me from three 
surviving members of his staff. Brigadier-General John 
A. Kress (U. S. A. retired), Colonel Clinton H. Meneely, 
of Troy, New York, and Major Earl M. Rogers, of 
Viroqua, Wisconsin, have spared no pains either in giving 
me such memoranda and recollections as they had or in 
answering my many questions. Their devotion to the 
memory of the soldier under whom fifty years ago they 



vi PREFACE 

were proud to serve has been one of my chief inspirations. 
In him these young men of twenty-one beheld an ideal 
of courage and of patriotism; if any of the brightness 
of that ideal is shed upon these pages, it is to them that 
the reader's thanks are due. In age they have not for- 
gotten the vision of their youth. 

Colonel W. R. Livermore's recently published "Story 
of the Civil War" has been of great assistance to me in 
revising the chapter on Gettysburg and in preparing the 
maps to illustrate the positions of troops; to Captain 
Morris Schaff's "Battle of the Wilderness" I am similarly 
indebted in connection with the chapter on that battle. 
To the authors themselves I make grateful acknowledg- 
ment for the help they have been so ready to give in 
person on the many difficult military questions with 
which I have had to deal. I am under especial obliga- 
tion to the office of the Adjutant-General of the United 
States Army for permission to consult the records for 
the purpose of ascertaining the number of troops under 
General Wadsworth's command at Washington and the 
strength of the Union forces at Gettysburg on the first 
day, and in the battle of the Wilderness. Mr. Oswald 
Garrison Villard has been kind enough to read the mili- 
tary chapters, and I have profited by his helpful sug- 
gestions. From Mr. E. B. Adams of Boston, Mr. C. A. 
Brinley of Philadelphia, and Mr. W. H. Samson of 
Rochester I have obtained information and valuable 
documents bearing on the early history of the Wads- 
worth family. Finally, to my secretary, Mr. Edward L. 
Viets, I owe much; to my wife I owe more than to any 
one else. 



CONTENTS 



VAGB 

Preface v 



CHAPTER 



I. The Inheritance 1 

II. Before the Call: 

I. Private Life 22 

II. Politics 35 

III. The Beginning of the War: Bull Run . . 55 

rV. Upton's Hill . 81 

V. Military Governor of Washington: New 

York Gubernatorial Campaign . . . 112 

VI. In Winter Quarters. Fitzhugh's Crossing. 
Chancellorsville. The March to Get- 
tysburg 167 

VII. Gettysburg 204 

VIII. Between Battles 239 

IX. The Wilderness 249 

Appendices 291 

Index 311 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

brigadier-general james s. wadsworth. Photogravure 

spiece 



Frontispiece ^ 



FACING PAGE 

COLONEL JEREMIAH WADSWORTH 4 

GENERAL WILLIAM WADSWORTH 10 

A PORTION OF AN INDIAN DEED 14 ^ 

JAMES WADSWORTH 20' 

JAMES S. WADSWORTH 22 ■ 

MRS. JAMES S. WADSWORTH. Photogravure 24^ 

ELIZABETH WADSWORTH. Photogravure 26 v 

RESIDENCE OF JAMES S. WADSWORTH, GENESEO ... 30 l 

BRIGADIER-GENERAL IRVIN MCDOWELL 66 l 

SONS AND SON-IN-LAW OF JAMES S. WADSWORTH ... 82 

T. R. H. THE COMTE DE PARIS AND THE DUC DE CHARTRES 98 

DAUGHTERS OF JAMES S. WADSWORTH 112 "' 

MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN F. REYNOLDS 170 V 

BRIGADIER-GENERAL LTSANDER CUTLER 170 ' 

SEMINARY RIDGE, GETTYSBURG 220 l 

STATUE OF BRIGADIER-GENERAL JAMES S. WADSWORTH . 238 ^ 

FAC-SIMILE OF JAMES S. WADSWORTH's LAST LETTER TO 

HIS WIFE 252 ^ 

FORT WADSWORTH, IN NEW YORK HARBOR 290 



MAPS 

BATTLE-FIELD OF BULL RUN Page 80 Y ' 

FIELD OF THE FIRST DAY'S BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG: 

(a) POSITION OF TROOPS AT NOON ) j. ■ »., 1/ 

(6) POSITION OF TROOPS AT 4 P. M. } ' ^^ ^ ~ U 

POSITION OF TROOPS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BATTLE 

of the wilderness facing page 260 ^ 

GENERAL MAP OF THE REGION BETWEEN GETTYSBURG, PA., 

AND FREDERICKSBURG, VA end of Volume 



JAMES S. WADSWORTH 
OF GENESEO 



CHAPTER I 

THE INHERITANCE 

The life of James S. Wadsworth, of Geneseo, was in a 
peculiar manner influenced by circumstances of environ- 
ment and of ancestry. The story of the land-owner and 
agriculturist who in the mid-decades of the nineteenth 
century was beloved by tenants and townsmen, of the 
citizen who publicly championed in western New York 
the unpopular cause of anti-slavery, of the volunteer 
soldier who threw himself heart and soul into the war 
for union and freedom, sacrificing his life on the field 
of battle, — this story is in its beginnings so inextricably 
engaged with that of the generation immediately pre- 
ceding that, to count for its full value, it must be pref- 
aced by introductory exposition and comment more 
ample than that to which the patience of the reader 
of biography is usually subjected. On the other hand, 
this preliminary narrative has the merit of possessing a 
completeness and interest all its own. 

In Durham, Connecticut, a town less than a score of 
miles northeast of New Haven, there were growing to 
manhood in the years preceding and during the period 
of the Revolution three brothers of the name of Wads- 
worth. Their father, John Noyes Wadsworth, a farmer 
like most of his neighbors, belonged to one of the an- 
cient families of the colony, his great-grandfather, Will- 
iam Wadsworth (1595P-1675), having been one of the 
group of one hundred persons who, in 1636, under the 
lead of the Reverend Thomas Hooker, marched from 
Cambridge, Massachusetts, through the wilderness to 



2 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

the Connecticut River and established the settlement 
of Hartford. From the ten children of William Wads- 
worth the family had spread widely, and it had become 
well known. Its male members were soldiers, farmers, 
lawyers, clergymen, and men of affairs, and, whether the 
pecuniary status of any individual happened to be fort- 
unate or otherwise, the family name, in a community 
notably precise in such matters, was one always held in 
honor. 1 

Among the Wadsworths of Colonial and Revolution- 
ary days, three men, Captain Joseph Wads worth (1648?- 
1730?), General James Wadsworth (1730-1817), and 
Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth (1743-1804) — names of fre- 
quent occurrence in Connecticut annals — illustrate the 
quality of the family. The first of these is associated 
with the familiar story of the Charter Oak. When Sir 
Edmund Andros, royal governor of New England under 
James II, came to Hartford to demand the charter which 
was the bulwark of the liberties of Connecticut, his pre- 
text being that the colony had enacted laws contrary to 
those of England, he found himself confronted in conven- 
tion by a body of angry and determined men. Suddenly 
the candles were extinguished, and when, after a pro- 
longed interval of darkness and confusion, they were relit, 
the charter, which had been lying on the table before the 
royal governor, had disappeared. It may not have been 
Captain Joseph Wadsworth who made away with the pre- 
cious parchment; but his title to the credit of having pre- 
served it in the hollow of a tree which was ever afterward 
known as the Charter Oak is pretty generally acknowl- 
edged, particularly in view of the fact that in 1715 he was 
voted a sum of money for his safeguarding the charter 
at a time " when our constitution was struck at." 2 Again, 
in 1693, according to Trumbull, 3 when Governor Fletcher, 

1 For the genealogy of the Wadsworth family, see Appendix A. 

2 Colonial Records of Connecticut, V, 507. 

3 History of Connecticut, I, 413. 



1C93-1788] THE EARLY WADSWORTHS 3 

of New York, having a commission vesting him with 
power to command the Connecticut militia, came to Hart- 
ford to assert his authority, Captain Wadsworth, in com- 
mand of the train-bands, ordered the drums to beat, in- 
tending thus to smother the reading of the governor's 
proclamation. In a brief, inadvertent interval of silence 
on the part of the contending parties, Captain Wads- 
worth, speaking "with great earnestness," gave a final 
order to his drummers, and then, turning to Governor 
Fletcher, said: "If I am interrupted again I will make 
the sun shine through you in a moment." The assurance 
of the word "interrupted," which may be an embellish- 
ment of the narrator's, was sufficiently sublime; but the 
force of character behind it caused the governor to desist 
from his efforts and to return to New York with the scope 
of his command no greater than when he sallied forth. 

General James Wadsworth, of Durham, another mil- 
itary member of the family, was a graduate of Yale 
College, of the class of 1748, his social rank, as given 
in the catalogue according to the custom of those days, 
being eleventh iri a class of thirty-three. He was pre- 
eminently the military representative of the family in 
his generation, having raised a company for the inva- 
sion of Canada in 1758 and serving also in the Revolu- 
tion, his final grade being that of major-general of the 
Connecticut line. The civil offices which he held were 
numerous, and his tenure of them, after the good old 
Connecticut fashion, was long. In the year 1784 he 
was a member of the Continental Congress. Perhaps 
his most conspicuous public act was his speech at the 
State convention assembled in January, 1788, to ratify 
the proposed Federal Constitution, when he set forth 
his belief that under the new instrument the tendency 
toward centralization of power would be irresistible and 
that in time of stress the rights of the States would go 
by the board. The authority vested in Congress to lay 
duties on imports he condemned, asserting that to unite 



4 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

the power of the purse and the power of the sword is 
despotic. 1 Though of course he was roundly voted down, 
he continued steadfast in his conviction. The oath to 
support the new government never passed his lips, for to 
him that would be a violation of his fidelity to his State; 
in short, he clung to the last to that doctrine of States' 
rights in protest against which, two generations later, 
the Wadsworth of this biography was to give his life. 
In 1788 Connecticut was too old and the Union too 
young for this attitude of the Revolutionary soldier to 
be treated with anything but respect, of which his ap- 
pointment by the assembly in 1794 to settle the accounts 
between Connecticut and New York is sufficient proof. 2 
The position of honor which this old soldier held as the 
"squire" in Durham is quaintly indicated in the rem- 
iniscences of the town historian: 

I remember, too, that the boys of the Center School 
often when they saw General Wadsworth coming, on his 
Narragansett pacer, with his large, erect, military figure, 
with his broad-brimmed hat, with his Olympian locks, 
would run across the Green to the road, to take off their 
hats and make a low bow. This courtesy he returned to 
each of us, taking his hat quite off, and bowing to each 
one. Thus he encouraged good manners, of which he 
was a model. 3 

Unquestionably the most eminent member of the 
family in the latter decades of the eighteenth century 
was Jeremiah Wadsworth, of Hartford, a man of great 
wealth and a true patriot. During the Revolutionary 
War, when, after the terrible winter at Valley Forge, 
Major-General Greene undertook the charge of the quar- 
termaster's department, he consented to serve as "com- 
missary-general of purchases." 4 These responsible and 

1 Bancroft's History of the United States, VI, 394. 

2 History of Durham, Connecticut, by William Chauncey Fowler, p. 186. 

3 Ibid., 186. 

4 He was elected to the position by Congress on April 9, 1778, and held it 
till January 1, 1780. 




COLONEL JEREMIAH WADSWORTH. 

m ;i portrail in the possession o! Mr James W. Wadsw< 



m3-i804] JEREMIAH WADSWORTH 5 

arduous duties he discharged in such a way as to win 
the praise of both Greene 1 and Washington. "I also 
consider it as an act of justice," wrote the latter to the 
president of Congress on August 3, 1778, "to speak of 
the conduct of Colo. Wadsworth, Commissary General. 
He has been indefatigable in his exertions to provide 
for the Army, and since his appointment our supplies 
of provisions have been good and ample." 2 Later in 
the war Wadsworth performed a similar service for the 
French army which had come to aid the Americans, 
and Rochambeau and the other officers of Louis XVI 
came to hold him in as warm regard as did Washington 
and Greene; for, besides being a person of force and 
integrity in public life, he was a man who, wherever he 
went, made friends. When Washington and Rocham- 
beau met at Hartford in the summer of 1780, Jeremiah 
Wadsworth was conspicuous among those who made them 
welcome; and it was under his roof that the two gen- 
erals discussed the plans for the campaign which they 
hoped to undertake together. At the close of the war, 
having gone to Paris to adjust his accounts with the 
French Government, he was honored by it with one of 
the gold medals struck to commemorate the restoring of 
peace between France and England. The effect of dig- 
nity, kindliness, and generosity produced by this man of 
the world was summed up by one of his young Durham 
kinsmen in a letter to a college friend: "Are you ac- 
quainted with his character? If not, take it in short. He 
can certainly say in many respects to Augustus of old, 
'Thou art my brother.'" 3 

It was the writer of this encomium, James, son of John 
Noyes Wadsworth, who was destined, with his brother 
William, to be the first to carry the name of Wadsworth 

'In one of the references to him in Greene's letters, he is described as 
" fretting his soul out " on account of some of his difficulties in provisioning 
the army. — (Life of Major-General Greene, by G. W. Greene, II, 167.) 

2 Ford's edition of the Writings of George Washington, VII, HI. 

3 James Wadsworth to Rev. Tillotson Bronson, February 18, 1790. 



6 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

beyond the borders of New England. Although young- 
est of the three sons, he was first to receive a college 
education, graduating from Yale in 1787 at the age of 
nineteen. His social rank among his classmates is not 
a matter of record, for the college authorities had aban- 
doned that practice even before the days of democracy; 
but there is preserved the subject of his commencement 
"thesis technologica " : magna et numerosa metropolis rei 
publico? emolumento non fuerit. For a year after his grad- 
uation, so the story goes, he tried his hand at teaching in 
Montreal, making the journey thither, it is said, in com- 
pany with the first John Jacob Astor, a youth of about 
his own age, who was just beginning his career in Amer- 
ica. But the call of the profession of teacher, as well as 
of the ministry, sounded faint as against the summons of 
the new age. George Washington had become first Pres- 
ident of the United States under the Constitution, and 
in the prosperity destined to come in the train of peace 
and stability this young man of twenty-one was resolved 
to have a share. From the time when his purpose was 
formed, late in the year 1789, the record of James Wads- 
worth's life becomes ample and vivid. 

Jeremiah Wadsworth, making welcome in his Hart- 
ford home this young cousin from Durham, perceived in 
him, with his ambition, his clear mind, and his tenacious 
will, what every man of large affairs longs for — a mem- 
ber of the next generation on whose active devotion he 
may rely, whom he may train up to the knowledge of 
his interests, and whom he may launch on enterprises 
that advancing age has the foresight to plan but not the 
strength to execute. All the more heartily did Jeremiah 
Wadsworth welcome James because his own son Daniel, 
though a man of undoubted parts, was unfitted both by 
health and by temperament for the life of business. What 
Jeremiah now proposed was that he should furnish money 
in order that James might purchase land and become a 
settler in western New York, in a region where he him- 



1790] THE GENESEE LANDS 7 

self had already made a considerable investment. Thus, 
when the resources of the man of means were combined 
with the youthful energy of the man whose wealth was 
in his mind and will, and when the field of both was a 
rich territory just opened to development, there was every 
prospect that the returns would be substantial and grati- 
fying. 

The Phelps and Gorham purchase, in which were the 
lands that Jeremiah Wadsworth had been induced to buy 
— probably through one of the chief purchasers, Oliver 
Phelps, well known to him from their common connection 
with the commissary department of Washington's army 
— was a tract of some two and a half million acres con- 
stituting the easternmost section of the lands in western 
New York that belonged to Massachusetts. Roughly 
speaking, it was bounded on the east by a line running 
north and south through what is now Geneva, and on 
the west by an irregular line from ten to fifteen miles 
west of what is now the city of Rochester. Its southern 
boundary was the State line, its northern the shore of 
Lake Ontario. The desirability of this land, particularly 
on its western margin along the Genesee River, was well 
known; but since it had only recently come into the 
market it had but few settlers, who were for the most 
part scattered along the trail running through Geneva 
and Canandaigua to Niagara. Jeremiah's own purchase 
consisted of about twenty-five thousand acres, forming 
township number six in range seven, which bordered on 
the Genesee River; 1 with the money that he advanced 
James Wadsworth bought a portion 2 of number nine, also 
in range seven, the township known as Big Tree. 

1 Brief of the Titles of Robert Morris to a Tract of Country in the County 
of Ontario, p. 33. 

2 One-twelfth, according to Turner's History of Phelps and Gorham's 
Purchase, p. 325. Whatever the amount of James Wadsworth's first purchase 
in Big Tree, on June 15, 1792, he bought of Phelps and Gorham at the rate 
of a dollar an acre an equal undivided moiety of the township (which was 
estimated to contain twenty-seven thousand acres), giving four several 
bonds and mortgages to secure the payment. — (From articles of agreement 
in possession of James W. Wadsworth.) 



8 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

To acquire land in the western wilderness at less than 
a dollar an acre for the purpose of speculation is one 
thing; to travel to that land for settlement and to re- 
main there in close proximity to the Indians, watching 
the tide of civilization creep thither by slow approaches, 
is quite another. For many of the demands of such a 
venture James Wadsworth was singularly unsuited. All 
his inclinations and habits of mind and body designated 
him for the office life of a business man or a lawyer. He 
had little of the manual facility and zest for practical 
accomplishment which are indispensable to the frontier 
settler. The qualities lacking in him, however, abounded 
in his next older brother, 1 William, whom he persuaded to 
join him in the undertaking and who proved to be a 
born leader of pioneers. The partnership of two men 
whose abilities complemented each other in such perfect 
fashion was what brought the enterprise to its high level 
of success. 

It was in the spring of 1790 that James and William 
Wadsworth set out from Durham. The story of their 
journey and of their settlement at Big Tree, a tale often 
told by the historians of western New York, may best 
be given here as it is narrated by Professor James Ren- 
wick, of Columbia College. 2 

The brothers hired a small band of hardy axmen in 
Connecticut, purchased provisions to maintain them until 
the first crops should ripen, and provided agricultural 
implements sufficient for their proposed farm. The 
whole party, with its heavy incumbrances, ascended the 
Hudson to Albany, then often the voyage of a week; 
made the long portage through the pines to Schenectady; 
embarked in bateaux upon the Mohawk . . . and fol- 
lowed its tortuous course until they reached the limit 
of continuous settlement. Here cattle were purchased 

1 The eldest brother, John Noyes, the father being dead, retained the 
land in Connecticut. 

2 From his sketch of James Wadsworth in the Monthly Journal of Agri- 
culture for October, 1846. Turner, pp. 324-344, gives an excellent account 
of the Wadsworth brothers and their work. 



1790] SETTLEMENT AT BIG TREE 9 

to serve as the foundation of a future stock and for 
temporary support, and the party was divided into two 
bands. James continued the laborious task of thread- 
ing nameless streams, encumbered by wood-drifts and 
running in narrow channels, while William undertook 
the still more difficult duty of driving the stock through 
the pathless forest. Finally the party was again united 
upon a small savannah upon the bank of the Genesee. 
... A house having been built by the aid of no other 
implement than the ax, crops were planted and the cat- 
tle turned out to graze in the rich savannah. . . . With 
the autumn came the enervating and unmanning attacks 
of the ague. This, to the natives of a country where it 
was unknown, presented such terrors that the hired men 
broke the conditions of their engagement and hurried as 
they best could to the older settlements, leaving the two 
brothers almost if not quite alone in their log-built cabin. 
In this position even mere passiveness on the part of their 
neighbour Big Tree, the chief of the Indian village on 
the Genesee, immediately opposite to the settlement of 
the Wadsworths, might have compelled them to follow 
their servants; but they now obtained from him ready 
and efficient aid. 1 . . . With the opening of a new spring, 
a fresh supply of white laborers was obtained, and 
whether they were acclimatized, or had been familiar- 

1 The friendly relations thus established between the two Wadsworths 
and the Indians were never broken. It was at their house, in 1797, that 
what is known as the treaty of Big Tree was negotiated, whereby the In- 
dian title to the lands west of the Genesee was extinguished and Robert Mor- 
ris was able to accomplish his sale to the Holland Land Company; on this 
occasion Jeremiah Wadsworth journeyed thither to take part in the proceed- 
ings as commissioner for the United States. The homestead, built about 
1800 on the high ground east of the river, had bullet-proof walls, but they 
were fortunately never put to the test. Thither the Indians came on 
matters of business and for advice; and the stains made upon the wooden 
floor of the parlor by their moccasins were visible even in the days of 
James Wadsworth's grandchildren. 

An indication of the continued interest of James Wadsworth in the In- 
dians appears in a letter which he addressed to Daniel Webster and which 
was published in 1838. In this letter he endeavored to show that the rea- 
son why they remained in a degraded condition was because they were kept 
on reservations where they held the land in common, and where they were 
preyed upon by the surrounding whites. He urged that they be colonized 
in the West, and that the holding of land in severalty, which he believed 
was "essential to the civilization of man," be permitted to them. 



10 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

ized to the endemic disease, no farther interruption oc- 
curred in the progress of the clearing. 

The duties to be performed were divided between the 
two brothers. Upon "William fell the management of the 
farm, — a task requiring the utmost diligence and master- 
fulness, for both labor and materials were scarce. Owing 
to the remoteness of the region and the high cost of trans- 
portation, the raising of stock proved to be the most 
profitable use to put the land to, for that was a crop 
which could be conveyed to market on its own feet. In 
this fashion the rich river pastures were made use of, 
except, of course, for such land as furnished the produce 
required by the household. Besides overseeing all this 
work, "Bill," as he was always called, had many repre- 
sentative duties which he discharged with gusto. At 
every house-raising or "logging bee" he was the life of 
the gathering, and the militia had no more faithful mem- 
ber than he. "General Bill," mounted on a fine black 
charger, was a figure to impress vividly the imagination 
of the youth assembled at the fall musters. 1 "Few men," 

1 William Wadswortk's devotion to the militia was worthy of a better 
fate. After twenty years' attendance at drill and muster, he was accepted 
when the war with England broke out in June, 1812, as major-general com- 
manding the militia of the Genesee district. These troops, stationed to- 
gether with a small force of regulars along the Niagara frontier, were natu- 
rally impatient for action, and on October 13 General Stephen Van Rens- 
selaer essayed to cross the river from Lewiston to drive the British from 
Queenstown Heights. Successful at first, the small band of Americans, 
mostly regular troops, had no hope of maintaining itself against the rein- 
forcements which the enemy were about to bring into action from Fort 
George. At this crisis the militia, falling back on their constitutional priv- 
ilege of not being bound to serve outside the limits of the State against 
their will, refused to budge. Wadsworth, who in his impetuosity had al- 
ready crossed to the other side of the river, and Van Rensselaer, who re- 
mained with the militia, were unable to stir them from the vantage-ground 
whence as spectators they could witness the engagement about to take place. 
The Americans, under Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott, were hemmed in 
by a force of British regulars and a band of Indians and forced to surrender. 
Two days later all the militia and the wounded regulars were returned upon 
parole. This ended General Bill's participation in the War of 1812. In his 
one battle he had gained much praise for his soldierly conduct under ex- 
ceedingly trying circumstances. — (Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, p. 330.) 




GENERAL WILLIAM WADSWORTH. 

From a portrait in the possesion ol Major \V. A. Wadsworth. 



1796-98] JAMES WADSWORTH IN ENGLAND 11 

remarks Turner, "were better fitted for a pioneer in the 
backwoods — to wrestle with the harshest features of pi- 
oneer life — or for being merged in habits, social inter- 
course, and inclinations with the hardy adventurers who 
were his early contemporaries." 1 

James, on the other hand, who assumed as his share 
of the work the task of disposing of the lands of which 
he had charge, soon found that there was little that he 
could accomplish at Big Tree, or, as it soon came to be 
called, Geneseo. Purchasers of these lands, whether for 
speculation or for settlement, must be sought in New 
York City and in Connecticut, and thither he went re- 
peatedly for that purpose. Indeed, during the period 
between his arrival at Big Tree in June, 1790, and his 
departure for England in 1796, he spent at Geneseo, 
besides the first winter, only the summer months of four 
years. Through this period, moreover, although specula- 
tive purchase of western lands was carried to the edge of 
peril, the first rush of settlers to the region opened up by 
the Phelps and Gorham purchase was by no means con- 
tinued. It was not surprising, therefore, that he accepted 
eagerly the proposal of several owners of lands in west- 
ern New York that he should visit England, to negotiate 
there, if possible, a sale for them. 

Although James Wadsworth's stay abroad, which 
lasted, including Atlantic voyages, from February, 1796, 
to November, 1798, was financially but moderately suc- 
cessful, it was rich in results affecting his political con- 
victions and personal tastes. That the Europe of 1796- 
1798 was full of warnings to strengthen an American in 
his loyalty to the newly founded republic appears from 
the prospectus of the Geneseo lands which he drew up 
for the benefit of possible purchasers. From the con- 
trast made therein between existing conditions in the Old 
World and in the New, it is clear that he regarded the 
principles embodied in the Constitution of the United 

1 Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, p. 330. 



12 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

States as the only sure basis of prosperity. The cairn 
and careful reasoning which he addressed to Englishmen 
about the state of their home investments constituted 
also his own democratic creed. In all this, of course, he 
was merely giving cautious expression to the feelings that 
prevailed on this side of the water in the first half -century 
of our national existence. His lack of success in England, 
however, and later the animosities arising from the War 
of 1812, contributed to intensify rather than to mitigate 
his anti-British prejudice. In his last years, indeed, this 
antipathy caused in his family the tragedy of a broken 
engagement, though after his death the lovers were re- 
united in strangely romantic fashion. 

Thorough-going as was his dislike to some things Brit- 
ish, James Wadsworth, by his prolonged stay in England, 
came to set a value upon other things cherished there. 
However vigorously he might reject the political institu- 
tions of the mother country, he could not utterly escape 
the consequences of his English ancestry. The country 
families, with their large estates, quickening the imagina- 
tion to a grateful sense of the worth of tradition and the 
beauty of well-ordered living, have cast a spell upon too 
many a loyal American to call for remark in the ease of 
this young pioneer. Evidently, not merely his imagina- 
tion but his will was quickened, and for the family which 
he meant to found in Geneseo he planned a similar set- 
ting. At any rate, after his experience in England he 
was willing to turn his back upon the metropolis of the 
New World, and to join fortunes with his brother in 
Geneseo. 

For the next four years, however, the status of west- 
ern lands in the market was such as to require a good 
deal of anxious attention. Even before his return, letters 
came from Colonel Jeremiah informing him that things 
were not going well. In truth, the embarrassments of 
Robert Morris had produced a crisis that affected more 
or less disastrously all those who had been speculating 



1801] MARRIAGE OF JAMES WADSWORTH 13 

in wild lands throughout the country. It was probably 
through these business difficulties that James Wadsworth 
was involved in 1801 in duels with two of the Kane 
brothers, brothers-in-law of Morris's son Thomas, who 
had the management of his father's lands. One of the 
brothers was, James had written to Colonel Jeremiah, 
"a great rascal," and an insult offered him by another 
of them was what brought on the encounters on the field 
of honor. 

With the beginning of the nineteenth century affairs 
in the Genesee Valley began to look brighter. The returns 
from the labor of ten years, though not large, were sub- 
stantial and full of promise. The letters written by James 
Wadsworth to Hartford in these years reveal how surely 
circumstances were binding him by a thousand ties of in- 
terest, loyalty, enthusiasm, and devoted labor to this land 
of his adoption. "When one first comes out of the woods 
to this place," he wrote on the occasion of a trip to New- 
York, "the novelty pleases for a few days; but to me a 
city life very soon becomes insipid and wearisome." In 
this fashion he maintained in later years his commence- 
ment thesis as to the disadvantages of a magna et nume- 
rosa metropolis. 

The strongest tie of all was the last to be knit. These 
same letters show, with entertaining frankness, how, as 
he built up the happiness of his life at Geneseo, he con- 
tinually felt the lack of a helpmate. As the long years 
of his single life rolled on, the references to this topic 
shade from gay to grave, and one cannot help surmising, 
from his increasing criticalness as to womankind, that it 
was by the narrowest of margins that he failed to remain, 
like his brother William, a bachelor to the end of his days. 
The lady who, in his own words, first brought him to 
"make his bow" with serious purpose was Naomi Wol- 
cott, daughter of Samuel Wolcott, of East Windsor, Con- 
necticut, and cousin of Oliver Wolcott, who had been 
Secretary of the Treasury in Washington's cabinet. They 



14 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

were married on October 1, 1804, he being thirty -six and 
she twenty-seven years of age. Five children were born 
to them, of whom James S. Wadsworth was the second 
child and the eldest son. 

A man like James Wadsworth, who, tenacious of pur- 
pose, planned in terms of decades and lavished on his 
plans minute attention to detail, had, perhaps, a right to 
count upon success. Though the first fruits of reward 
in the early years of the century were cut short by the 
period of depression caused by the troubles that culmi- 
nated in the War of 1812, at length, when peace was estab- 
lished, the quarter of a century of preparation began to 
receive its adequate reward. With another decade, in 
1825, what had been from the first the greatest obstacle 
of all to the development of western New York — lack of 
cheap transportation — was overcome by the opening of 
the Erie Canal. Genesee wheat could then be profitably 
raised for the Eastern market, and from that time on 
every part of the region had a share of well-earned fame 
and prosperity. 

In these days of affluence, when men like the Wads- 
worth brothers, who had ventured much and labored 
longest and hardest, naturally fared best, the fact that 
they adopted the principle of using their surplus profits 
in the purchase of more land in the Genesee region is 
highly significant. At a period in America when manu- 
factures and commerce, offering returns both immediate 
and glittering, were absorbing capital rapidly, they pre- 
ferred the slow and moderate profits obtainable from 
ownership of the soil. So extensive, indeed, were James 
Wadsworth's purchases that he could ride, it was said, 
from Geneseo to Rochester, a distance of twenty-eight 
miles, on his own land. 1 

1 He also purchased land in Ohio and Michigan. Among the deeds of 
the estate is one dated September 20, 1788, of a tract in Michigan sixty miles 
long and twelve miles wide on the north side of the river a la Franche, a 
"free and voluntary gift of the principal chiefs and leaders of the Chipe- 
way nation of Indians at Detroit," to Jonathan SchJeffelm, lieutenant of 



m i l i , , —^— — — 

-..,:.■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ; / ' ' '; ■' ■ 



4 



w 



■ { .1 I . 



/ 



■ta t/7-am 



f 



' 



'■•;■ - 



7 ' 



/ ' / ' ' 

ia< /At i/ac't/o JitttttfaS- I,-*"- ■' ' ''•; ^1 

/£ /J 

t> /errvsi/r . 4y\ ,,./■ /'..,-« »<•»-///. V. .iJir/- 4 </Yi.'r,\/' (ta> , K /ea.£ l i-/i /,., >''-. 

,- / >\, .'.-,.■■, .*ra.fie.: P.friian) &*■ *fe ^- -m+eC/'ji /,,',• /<,.y/' ,■■ 
/ N 



A PORTION OF AN I 

In the possession of Mr. Jut: 



2 i 



&M 



t, //•■' t.s,r.'ti*t 

or 



^/,. 

£* 










■ 




' < /" 

r.r .,■,. . ,-.-/• .-//,' isX __ 

■ ■■ ■ . ■'.-.. -.■! :■, . '. , 'f ,'/f. ■■ , 



•IAN DEED. 
W. Wadsworth. 



1825] THE WADSWORTH ESTATE 15 

The explanation of his freedom from the American 
passion for haste at all hazards lies in the distinctive 
ideal that he cherished — an ideal of which the groups of 
trees that he left standing in his pastures told the story. 
In this country, as an English traveller in the 'forties 
complained, "people seldom ever seem really to get near 
a tree except to cut it down." l According to the tradi- 
tion and prejudice of backwoodsmen, the shade ruined 
+he grass, whether for hay or for grazing. But James 
Wadsworth, with the recollection of English parks that 
had delighted his eye, was not at all moved by such con- 
siderations. The result proved that the harm predicted 
was wholly imaginary. The benefit of occasional shade 
for the cattle was most desirable, while the effect of 
beauty has given the Genesee Valley the happy distinc- 
tion of providing the traveller's memory with an unfor- 
gettable picture. 

In working out this ideal of a large estate, however, 
James Wadsworth's common sense and democratic faith 
never allowed him to lose sight of the need of adapting 
his aims to American conditions. The system of leases 
evolved in the course of years for the lands worked by 
tenants is only one out of a dozen instances that might 
be cited to exemplify this fact. The leases, which had 
at first been drawn for life tenure, were gradually short- 
ened, until finally the general practice came to be to 
draw them for only a year. This arrangement did not 
mean that the farms changed hands frequently; on the 
contrary, any change in the tenants was very rare. 2 

volunteers. The signatures of nine white men testify that "the said prin- 
cipal chiefs and leaders were perfectly sober at the time of signing and de- 
livery of said deeds and writings for the said tract of land, granted as afore- 
said, and that the extent and quantity was fully explained in our presence." 
That portion of the deed containing the signatures of the Indians is here 
reproduced. 

1 Lord Morpeth's MS. journal of his travels in North America in 1840-41. 
Pierce-Sumner Collection, Harvard College Library. 

2 Not a few of the farms are at the present time occupied by descendants 
of the early tenants. 



16 WADS WORTH OF GENESEO 

For them, the result of the short-term system was, 
according to Professor Renwick, that they "were upon 
the whole more successful in their pursuits, enjoyed a 
greater share of comfort, and laid by larger profits than 
those who purchased upon credit lands of equal quality 
in the neighborhood." 1 For the owner the advantage 
was that in the matter of improvements, rotation of 
crops, and so on, he kept the control of his property in 
his own hands, and also ran no risk of the "anti-rent" 
disturbances that troubled the owners of the large es- 
tates in the Hudson River counties where long-term 
leases prevailed. 

What thorough attention the leased farms required 
— and received — from James Wadsworth is apparent from 
his instructions to the farm agent, whom he directed to 
make inquiries as follows: 

Are the gates in good order? Is the wood-pile where 
it ought to be? Are the grounds around the house kept 
in a neat and wholesome manner? Are the sheds and 
yard fence around the barn in a good state of repair? 
The land agent should make suggestions to the tenants 
on the leading principles of good husbandry, with fre- 
quent references to sound morals, founded on the sanc- 
tion of religion and just reasoning; and also the unap- 
preciable importance of the education of youth and of 
a vigilant attention to the state of common schools in 
the lessees' district. Shade trees must be about each 
house. From a look or two about the garden or house, 
you can easily ascertain if the occupant drinks bitters 
in the morning or whiskey with his dinner. If he drinks 
bitters, you will find his garden full of weeds. 2 

The result achieved by James Wadsworth as the 
product of a lifetime of labor was unique, and the reason 
is apparent when one considers what, according to Eng- 
lish and to American criticism respectively, were its weak 

1 Journal of Agriculture, October, 1848, p. 151. For further quotations 
from Professor Renwiek's article, see Appendix B. 

2 Turner, Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, p. 341. 



1834] THE WADSWORTH ESTATE 17 

points. To the Englishman, James Wadsworth's profits 
seemed large, but still not sufficiently generous to com- 
pensate for the fact that the possession of the land, be- 
sides requiring much hard work of its owner, gave "no 
political and little social influence," when "by lending 
his money and doing nothing a man can obtain seven per 
cent certain." 1 To the American, whose magnet was the 
even more remunerative industries centring in a magna 
et numerosa metropolis, the life of a "farmer" was as 
repugnant as its gains seemed inconsiderable. To the 
owner himself each of these opposing objections was but 
stronger motive for taking satisfaction in the work of his 
own hands and brain. 

Unique his achievement was, and complete also. 
Nothing conveys the sense of well-rounded attainment 
better than the picture of him at Geneseo in 1834, as 
drawn by another English traveller: 

Fortune seemed not yet wearied of being bountiful, 
and allowed us to see this most beautiful valley, with the 
advantage of residing in one of the most hospitable and 

agreeable houses that I ever entered. Mr. W 's son 

accompanied us through his extensive farms, which are 
formed to delight equally the eye of a Poussin or a Sir 
J. Sinclair. The broad meadows of an alluvial soil, cov- 
ered with the richest grasses, as watered by the winding 
Genesee, are studded with trees beautifully and negli- 
gently grouped, among which are scattered large herds 
of cattle of various breeds and kinds, both English and 
American; the meadows are here and there interspersed 
with fields of Indian-corn and wheat, while the hills that 
rise on each side are crowned with timber, excepting 
spots where the encroaching hand of improvement has 
begun to girdle some of the tall sons of the forest, whose 
scathed tops and black, bare arms, betokening their ap- 
proaching fall, give a picturesque variety to the scene. 

Yet this scene, extraordinary and interesting as it 
was, possessed less interest to a contemplative and nuis- 

1 Notes on North America, by Professor J. F. W. Johnston, I, 206. See 
Appendix C. 



18 WADS WORTH OF GENESEO 

ing mind than the venerable and excellent gentleman 
who had almost created it; for it was now 44 years 

since Mr. W came as the first settler to this spot, 

with an axe on his shoulder, and slept the first night 
under a tree. After this he lodged in a log-house, sub- 
sequently in a cottage; and he is now the universally 
esteemed and respected possessor of a demesne which 
many of the proudest nobility of Europe might look upon 
with envy, where he exercises the rites of hospitality in 
the midst of his amiable family with a sincerity and kind- 
ness that I shall not easily forget. 1 

This effect of completeness, it should be remembered, 
however, was attained by years of labor in other fields 
besides those of land. Just as the pioneer farmer's vent- 
ure was what he could raise on his hundred-acre lot, 
so James Wadsworth's venture was the social welfare 
of the entire Geneseo tract. His responsibility toward 
the region had from the first, and in the most natural 
manner possible, quickened in him the community sense. 
Whatever may have been the case in the early Puritan 
commonwealths, the pioneers of the first years of the 
nineteenth century who went forth to settle western 
New York were pioneers also of the age which imagined 
that it was approximating complete democracy in en- 
deavoring to approximate complete individualism. With 
a social sense developed only enough to provide the few 
necessary measures for common protection and preser- 
vation, they looked askance at suggestions intended to 
bring about among them greater coherence. To James 
Wadsworth the situation in Geneseo was typified, as he 
used to indicate to his guests, by the contrast between 
the spires of four rival churches visible from his win- 
dows and the one school-house, which, as he bade them 
note, was in such condition that a good farmer would 
consider it unfit to keep swine in. What stock of sur- 
plus energy his neighbors possessed was, he felt, not 

1 Travels in North America during the Years 1834-5-6, by the Hon. C. 
A. Murray, I, 80, 81. 



1827] INTEREST IN EDUCATION 19 

turned to strengthen the community either for that gen- 
eration or the next, but was exploited on the motives of 
individual salvation and sectarian rivalry. To train that 
which was a community only in name to a sense of this 
lack in itself became the object of his philanthropic labors 
in the later years of his life. 

From the time when he first entertained the idea of 
settling in western New York his plans for the develop- 
ment of the region had included an "academy" or some 
similar institution of higher learning. The long season 
of winter leisure, which country dwellers are so prone to 
waste, he devoted to hard study and reflection concern- 
ing the changes that were beginning to take place in the 
body of accepted knowledge, and the ways in which the 
benefit of the advances of science might be brought im- 
mediately to the population whose welfare he had at heart. 
In 1827 he was successful in establishing in Geneseo a 
high-school "sufficiently extensive to teach six hundred 
scholars, particularly in the higher branches of science." 
Though in those early days he could find no one better 
equipped to teach these subjects than three youths, Cor- 
nelius C. Felton, Henry R. Cleveland, and Seth Sweetser, 
fresh from the classical curriculum at Harvard, he held 
fast to his original purpose and never failed to proclaim 
his faith. "It will be no injury to a mason," he wrote, 
"to become acquainted with the properties of air, nor 
to a millwright with the properties of fluids, and, I add, 
to the mighty mass of mind throughout the State to 
reason correctly." And again: "The man who is sci- 
entifically instructed is a double man, whether he acts 
in General Scott's regiments on the lines, or in a work- 
shop, or on a farm, or in the cabinet at Washington." * 
Admirable illustrations, these, that it is the clear thinker 
living close to realities who is the first to catch the spirit 
of the age to come. 2 

1 American Journal of Education, 1858, pp. 396, 397. 

2 The practical and persistent effort which James Wadsworth gave to the 
cause of public education in New York is set forth in detail in an article in 



20 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Although time and money without stint were expended 
by James Wadsworth in this chosen 'work of his for the 
public welfare, he kept himself through it all very much 
in the background. In the same fashion, too, he avoided 
the publicity of politics. To a certain extent he was 
active behind the scenes, particularly with William H. 
Seward and Thurlow Weed, at the time of the "anti- 
masonry" excitement in 1S27-182S; but neither as Fed- 
eralist nor as Whig would he consent to stand before the 
people as a candidate for office. 

No man ever saw with clearer eye than James Wads- 
worth what opportunity had to offer him, or ever with 
firmer will made it render up to him the uttermost of 
his desires. Fortunately, the material that he wrought 
in — the land — has this benefaction for its owner, when, 
as in this case, he dwells upon it and cultivates it with 
free labor: because of its imposing permanence, because 
it is the home as well as the means of livelihood of those 
dependent upon it, it will not suffer its temporary pos- 
sessor to ravage it for a few years' profit. Subtly it works 
through his imagination upon every purpose, so that his 
thought of it gradually comes to concern as much what 
he shall give as what he shall get. The certainty that 

the American Journal of Education for 1858, pp. 389-406. In substance it is 
a story of attempts through legislative action to arouse the several town 
governments to their duty to keep fresh the springs of democracy for the 
next generation. Slow work it was, for the reasons already given; but 
mere slowness was not discouragement to a man of his long-range endeavor. 
Hall's Lectures on School Keeping, and The School and the Schoolmaster, 
by Alonzo Potter and George B. Emerson, were books in the preparation 
and distribution of which he was actively concerned. Of the latter of 
these books his son-in-law, Martin Brimmer, mayor of Boston in 1843, 
distributed three thousand five hundred copies among the public schools and 
school committees of Massachusetts. Another work, an essay on Town 
Organization: Its Uses and Advantages, by Robert A. Coffin, was the re- 
sult of a prize offered by James Wadsworth. To him also the system of 
district-school libraries owes its existence. Copies of important school re- 
ports — particularly of work done in Massachusetts — and of educational ar- 
ticles of note in newspapers and magazines he procured in large numbers 
and distributed widely. Finally, the library in Geneseo, known as the Wads- 
worth Athenasum, was endowed by him. 




JAMES WADSWORTH. 

i a portrait in the possession oi Major W. V Wadsworth. 



THE INHERITANCE 21 

in the end his children will possess this domain is the 
final incentive to its master to make it in every sense 
a fair inheritance. Thus for James Wadsworth's recog- 
nition of responsibility as the mate of opportunity not 
only his family but the whole region of western New 
York had reason to be grateful. 

With this endowment of ancestry, with this environ- 
ment, what would his eldest son make of life? 



CHAPTER II 
BEFORE THE CALL 

I 

PRIVATE LIFE 

James Samuel, the second of the five children of James 
and Naomi Wadsworth and the eldest son, was born on 
October 30, 1807. 1 His childhood and youth were passed, 
it is hardly necessary to say, in happy circumstances; but 
of traits or deeds associated with these early years little 
is known except that he was quick and strong of body, 
bold and ardent in character, and full of high spirits. 

In his early education what was imparted to him from 
books probably counted for less than the varied life 
which centred in his home. At all events, his college 
career shows that he had no faculty, innate or acquired, 
for systematic hard study, and no motive either of in- 
terest or compulsion for addressing himself to the dry, 
classical routine of what then constituted the curriculum 
at Harvard. He was a member of the class of 1828 dur- 
ing its junior and senior years, but he did not receive a 
degree. Older than most of the members of his class, he 
possessed a broader experience of life, and this fact un- 
doubtedly made it easier for him to undervalue the studies 
that they were pursuing. Then, too, although he had not 
inherited his father's keen mind and gift for the persist- 
ent pursuit of detail, he unquestionably had imbibed 
some of his contempt for the old-fashioned educational 
methods of colleges. However that may be, as concerns 

1 Harriet was born in 1805; William Wolcott, Cornelia, and Elizabeth in 
1810, 1812, and 1815, respectively. 

22 




.1 \MKS S WADSWORTH. 

rater-color sketch in the possession uf Mrs. Charles F. Wadsworth. 



1807-34] EARLY YEARS 23 

learning in these years, James S. Wadsworth seems to have 
come out at the same door wherein he went. 

Friends he had in plenty, and they were men worth 
knowing. Among them were the three young fellows of 
the class above his, who, immediately after their gradu- 
ation, went to Geneseo to be the first teachers in the new 
academy founded by his father. And with Felton and 
Cleveland was to be reckoned another member of the 
"Five of Clubs," Charles Sumner. John Lothrop Mot- 
ley, a freshman of thirteen, admired the "dashing, hand- 
some young man," seven years his senior, but did not 
know him. 

Wadsworth's legal education was as unsystematic as 
his college studies had been. A season of "reading law" 
in the office of Daniel Webster was followed by a year, or 
part of a year, 1829-1830, at the Yale Law School, and this 
by study in the office of McKean and Denniston at Al- 
bany. Such training was highly important for a -man 
destined for the kind of work that was before Wadsworth ; 
and it was to this end, rather than with the intention of 
practising, that he pursued his studies till he was admit- 
ted to the bar in 1833. 

In truth, by this time there was need of him at Gen- 
eseo. In the month of March, 1831, his mother and his 
nineteen-year-old sister Cornelia had died; in this year, 
1833, his uncle, "General Bill," and his oldest sister Har- 
riet had followed. 1 The duty of the eldest son was to 
bring strength and comfort to the three remaining mem- 
bers of the family, and to acquire an understanding of 
the way in which the property was managed. His father 
had inherited General Bill's lands and at sixty-five had 
reached an age to feel the need of training younger shoul- 
ders to bear his burden. 

The final motive to hold young James Wadsworth to 
Geneseo was added when, on May 11, 1834, he was mar- 
ried to Mary Craig Wharton, daughter of a well-known 

1 Harriet in 1829 had married Martin Brimmer (1793-1847), of Boston. 



24 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

family of Quaker merchants in Philadelphia. 1 At the 
time of her marriage she was not quite twenty, "the most 
beautiful woman in the country," as Motley wrote, in the 
language of enthusiastic reminiscence, "and as agreeable 
and accomplished as beautiful." 2 

Desirable as was the elder son's presence at Geneseo, 
his father had no mind to restrain him and his bride from 
making an extended trip abroad. Provided with letters 
of introduction and with an even better passport in the 
fame of Mrs. Wadsworth's beauty, the young couple pur- 
sued a brilliant and happy course through France and 
England. In Paris, there were those who welcomed them 
for the sake of the old friendship of Lafayette, Rocham- 
beau, and their brother officers for Colonel Jeremiah Wads- 
worth. In England, too, they were received with great 
cordiality. As the result of an acquaintance with Lord 
Palmerston, the young American farmer was successful 
in arranging for a number of lads from his estate on the 
west coast of Ireland to come to the Genesee Valley as 
laborers; furthermore, in their search for a house the style 
of which pleased them, the Wadsworths chose Lord Hert- 
ford's villa in Regent's Park, and before they sailed for 
home were able to procure plans of it, from which they 
proposed to build a replica in Geneseo. 

As soon as possible after their return, work was begun 
upon the house, which, situated in ample grounds at the 
opposite end of the village from the homestead, com- 
manded to the west the same wide view over the valley, 
with its pastures studded with groups of oaks and elms. 
In this autumn of 1835, Charles Frederick, the first of 
their six children, was born. 3 



1 Her father, John Wharton, was the grandson of Joseph Wharton (1707- 
1776), the owner of Walnut Grove, where in May, 1778, took place the brill- 
iant fete, known as the Meschianza, which was given to Sir William Howe 
before his departure for England. 

2 J. L. Motley and His Family, Further Letters, p. 207. 

3 The others were Cornelia, Craig Wharton, Nancy Wharton, James 
Wolcott, Elizabeth. Craig died in 1872, Charles in 1899. 







,,.,//, 



1838] EARLY MARRIED LIFE 25 

Among the young people in the two households there 
was naturally, in these peaceful years, much merriment, 
watched over, as from afar, by the single surviving mem- 
ber of the elder generation, and it is not strange that young 
James's fondness for a jest at the expense of his father 
was frequently exercised. On one occasion, conspiring 
with his wife and his sister, he dressed the young Charles 
Frederick, aged three, in the uniform in miniature of a 
British soldier and then sent the child alone into the room 
where his grandfather was sitting. The immediate ex- 
plosion of wrath gratified all the expectations of the 
mischief-makers; the old gentleman rushed out to hurl at 
them the words: "Would you make a harlequin of your 
boy?" At another time the elder Wadsworth, walking 
on Broadway with his son and Thurlow Weed, met the 
man with whom thirty years before he had exchanged 
shots on the field of honor. The other bowed, but he 
made no sign. "Don't you know Mr. Kane?" asked his 
son, and received the brief answer: "I met him once." 
"Supposing," writes Thurlow Weed, "that James had not 
heard of the duel, when we were alone I mentioned it to 
him, to which he replied, laughing, 'I know all about that, 
but I wanted to draw the governor out.' " 1 Anecdotes as 
slight as these do not survive in any convincing number 
for seventy or eighty years, but the fact of a strong love 
of fun in the younger Wadsworth is testified to by a tra- 
dition shared amongst innumerable friends and visitors. 

From the earliest days of Big Tree the Wadsworths 
had been famed for their hospitality. The Frenchman 
or Englishman on his way to Niagara Falls was almost 
certain to appear at the door of the homestead with a 
letter of introduction, and relatives and friends from Hart- 
ford, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were constantly 
coming and going. Moreover, in a household that con- 

1 Autobiography, p. 153. Weed, as editor of the Rochester Telegraph, had 
in 1823 made the acquaintance of James Wadsworth, and always spoke of 
him warmly as a " friend and patron." 



26 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

tained a nature so gay and sweet as Elizabeth Wadsworth, 
it was not strange that young bachelors should find at- 
traction; and men like Charles Sumner and "Prince 
John," the brilliant and handsome son of President Van 
Buren, were not infrequently to be found there. 

Among English visitors, mention must be made of 
Lord Morpeth, the friend of Charles Sumner and a de- 
scendant of that Earl of Carlisle who, in 1778, had come 
from England with vain offers of peace. He found as 
Wadsworth's tenants three Yorkshiremen from his own 
neighborhood, one of whom told him that James Wads- 
worth was "the finest nobleman in the country." 1 But 
of all the travellers from over-seas, Charles Murray is the 
most noteworthy, for he it was who was destined to win 
Elizabeth Wadsworth's heart. The story of their love 
is a moving page in the family history. 

Charles Augustus Murray, second son of the Earl of 
Dunmore, was an Englishman of unusual personal charm 
and exceptional ability. Famous at Oxford for his feat 
of riding in one day to London and back, a distance of 
one hundred and twenty miles, he also displayed marked 
literary tastes and was a frequent guest at Samuel Rogers's 
breakfast-table. His fondness for the active life of travel 
brought him to America, and in 1834, when he was twenty- 
eight years old, he appeared at Geneseo, accompanied by 
his friend, Andrew Buchanan, then British attache at 
Washington. No prolonged visit was needed for either 
Charles Murray or Elizabeth Wadsworth to discover the 
rare qualities of mind and character which the other pos- 
sessed, or for a strong affection to grow up between them 
and to be avowed. James Wadsworth, however, refused 
his consent to their engagement, and Murray, pursuing 
his original plan, continued his journey to the West. He 
joined a tribe of wandering Pawnees, with whom he lived 
for a number of months, experiencing adventures the nar- 
rative of which forms an interesting part of his Travels 
1 Travels in America, p. 24. 



i83i-5i] ELIZABETH WADSWORTH 27 

in North America. Returning to Geneseo at the end of 
a year or more, he renewed his suit. James Wadsworth 
now relented, but his willingness to put his daughter's 
happiness first was not of long duration. After a few 
months he insisted that the engagement should be broken 
off, giving as a reason that he could not allow his daugh- 
ter to live so far away. The girl, who was not yet twenty- 
one, yielded, as many another before her had yielded, to 
the old man's iron will, and Charles Murray went back 
to England. 

Eight years later, in 1844, James Wadsworth died, 
being seventy-six years of age. When the news of his 
death reached England, Murray wrote at once to Eliza- 
beth Wadsworth urging that, as her service of filial devo- 
tion was now ended, there could be no obstacle to their 
marriage. Though her deep affection for him had never 
altered, her over-sensitive nature and an exaggerated feel- 
ing that her youth had gone — she was only twenty -eight, 
but her hair had begun to turn gray — made her fear that 
the offer was now prompted by chivalry alone, and she re- 
fused him. Six years afterward she was travelling in Eng- 
land with her friends, the Duncans. At a crowded junction 
where the train in which they were journeying to Scotland 
was stopping, the carriage occupied by her party was un- 
expectedly entered by Charles Murray. Within a week 
after the meeting thus brought about by a caprice of fate 
— once, at least, bent upon an errand of mercy — the en- 
gagement of the reunited lovers was announced; in a short 
space of time the marriage took place, her brother James 
coming from America to give her away. The Murrays 
went almost immediately to Cairo, where he had been 
consul-general for some years. A year later Elizabeth 
Murray died, leaving an infant a few days old. Among 
the thousand love tragedies of the world, few are at the 
same time so simple and so poignant as this one. 

Not long after this blow, another fell in the death of 
William Wadsworth. After a few years of married life, 
the latter part of which was clouded by ill health, he died 



28 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

in 1852, leaving to his brother's care a widow 1 and three 
small boys. Thus, at the age of forty-five, James S. 
Wadsworth was left without brother or sister, and through 
the death of his brother-in-law and co-executor, Martin 
Brimmer, the entire management of the property fell to 
him. Included in this duty was that of attending to the 
inheritance of his brother's children and of his nephews, 
Martin Brimmer, Jr., and Charles James Murray. The 
latter, having an English father, was debarred by the 
laws of New York from inheriting the land owned by his 
mother; but Wadsworth, in order that the little alien 
might suffer no ultimate loss, procured with considerable 
difficulty the enactment of a special law by which the 
land in question was held in trust until the boy should 
come of age and decide for himself whether he should 
remain a British subject or become a citizen of the United 
States. In a thousand affairs, ranging from such a mat- 
ter as this to the minutest detail of crops and leases, in 
all of which Wadsworth must decide, and decide right, 
there was enough to charge every minute of the day with 
activity. "He is," wrote Murray's naval brother, "the 
nearest thing to perpetual motion I ever saw . . . and 
he has more 'irons in the fire' than there were bayonet 
points before Sevastopol." 2 

Busy as he was, no man ever fitted himself to his 
responsibilities with less friction. The father's passion 
for organization and thoroughness, together with his per- 
ception of the necessity that his subordinates should be 
men of no less than first-rate ability, had already created 
a machine perfectly adapted to the work in hand; what 
was required from the son was the direction of the ma- 
chine from day to day. 3 

But in the wealth of James S. Wadsworth's inheri- 

1 He married Emineline Austin, of Boston, sister of the late Edward 
Austin. His two sons who grew to manhood are William Austin Wads- 
worth and Herbert Wadsworth. 

2 Lands of the Slave and the Free, by Capt. the Hon. Henry A. Murray, 
R. N., p. 45. 

3 See Appendix C. The Wadsworth Estate in 1850. 



1847] RELIEF FOR IRELAND 29 

tance there was more than this. Not only the way of 
life fashioned by his father but also the convictions on 
which it was based he accepted implicitly. Neither the 
younger man's abundance of means nor the personal gift 
of leadership that soon began to manifest itself in him 
ever brought him to betray the sincere creed of democ- 
racy in the light of which the elder Wadsworth had lived 
and worked. The contrast in outward circumstances 
between the early life of father and of son may easily be 
made too much of; the point to remember is the conti- 
nuity from one generation to the next of those convic- 
tions that count for far more than money. 

More genial and more ardent than his father, the 
younger Wadsworth, having lacked the discipline of mak- 
ing a fortune grow by constant calculation of profit and 
loss, was also less precise in the spending of it. Indeed, 
his impulse to give was almost incorrigible. How ready 
he was to respond to a call upon him appeared on a large 
scale at the time of the Irish famine of 1847. In the 
movement in Boston and New York to send relief Wads- 
worth was quick to join, and his contribution of grain 
filled one of the ships sent from New York to Ireland. 
Again, some eight or ten years later, when he owned a 
house in New York, 1 it was his practice, on coming to the 
city each autumn, to call at the office of one of the most 
effective benevolent societies, and to leave with its secre- 
tary a check for three or five thousand dollars. His char- 
ity, as the narrator of the incident justly remarks, "formed 
as much a part of his system of life as business itself." 2 

Meanwhile, a succession of prosperous years, culmi- 
nating in a season when wheat sold at the high price of 
three dollars a bushel, gave to his ability to spend freely 
a perceptible stimulus. It was the needs of his growing 
household that were chiefly responsible for the addition 

1 On Sixteenth Street, between Fifth Avenue and Broadway. 

2 See the editorial entitled " A Country Gentleman of the Free States," 
in the New York Evening Post, September 27, 1864. 



30 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

of an upper story to the house at Geneseo — an alteration 
by which its resemblance to Lord Hertford's villa was 
considerably modified; but the plan of taking his whole 
family abroad for an extended stay was one which few 
American fathers of that day would have had either the 
means or the inclination to put into effect. Some remi- 
niscences written by the eldest daughter give interesting 
glimpses of the trip. 

We first went to Paris, where we met my eldest brother, 
Charles, just returned from Egypt and studying at the 
Ecole des Mines in the Quartier Latin. A short time 
after we arrived Charles developed small pox and gave 
it to my father, who was very ill at the Hotel Meurice 
for weeks. He was obliged to take the whole wing of 
the hotel in which our rooms were, as all the other people 
went away for fear of infection, though he was so well 
isolated that not one of the rest of us took it. 

When he got well we went to the South of France, 
travelling for the most part in a large carriage, — a berline, 
it was called. It was a second-hand one which my father 
had commissioned the courier to buy for him, and he was 
much dismayed, when it met us at Tours, to find that a 
huge coat of arms in brilliant colors, surmounted by a cor- 
onet, still decorated the panels. We were obliged to stay 
at Tours till this could be painted out and my father's 
republican spirit appeased! 

We travelled with four horses and postillions, a new 
and most delightful experience to all of us young people. 
In this way we went through Southern France, stopped at 
many places of interest, and came in June to Switzerland, 
where we spent the summer at the "Trois Couronnes" 
at Vevey. My father was obliged to go to Geneseo for 
several months, but he came back to us in the autumn, 
when we crossed the Alps, and stayed all that winter in 
Italy, a rather diminished party, as my sister Nancy and 
my brother James were left at school in Vevey. 

The following May we all (with the exception of 
Charles, who remained in Paris), went to England, as 
my father was anxious to visit the spot where his sister 
was buried, and to see the child in giving birth to whom 
she had died. 



1857-59] THE YOUNGER GENERATION 31 

Enriched by the memory of many adventures, and 
with the bond that held them together strengthened, as 
is always the case with those who enjoy a holiday in com- 
mon, the Wadsworth family returned to the absorbing 
routine of work and play that made up their home life. 
In 1857 took place the marriage of the eldest daughter 
to Montgomery Ritchie, of Boston, grandson of Harri- 
son Gray Otis; in 1859 Charles completed his studies in 
Paris, being the first American to receive the diploma of 
the French school. 

Meanwhile the Genesee Valley was suffering from a 
term of lean years that coincided most unfortunately with 
the period of depression caused by the financial panic of 
1857. The extent of the disaster, due to the ravages of a 
tiny insect called the wheat midge, appears from a report 
which Wadsworth communicated to the State Agricult- 
ural Society: 

The midge was seen here in 1854; a little in Monroe 
and Livingston counties; did no material damage; more 
seen in 1855; did no material damage in this county; con- 
siderable in Monroe; came from the east. In 1856, the 
midge took from one-half to two-thirds of the crops in 
this county on upland, and nearly all on flats; at least 
2,000 acres on flats, which would have yielded thirty 
bushels per acre, not harvested. Worse in 1857, took 
over two-thirds of crops; 1858, very little white wheat 
to harvest; a few fields escaped; generally destroyed. 
Mediterranean wheat escaped generally (as it is supposed 
from being earlier); perhaps one-fifth Mediterranean 
destroyed; spring barley very much injured this year 
by midge. In some cases, one-half to two-thirds crops 
taken. Winter barley too early for midge. Very little 
white wheat now sown in western New York. 

. . . The midge has reduced the value of all the 
wheat lands in western New York, at least forty per 
cent. Lands which sold here readily for $70. per acre, 
can now be bought for $40. per acre. 1 

1 N. Y. State Agricultural Society Transactions for 1858, p. 300. 



32 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

In the privations consequent upon the loss of the 
Genesee Valley's world-wide prestige as a wheat-growing 
region, Wadsworth's concern was constantly with the suf- 
ferings of his tenants. Rejecting their requests that they 
be allowed to make good the next year the deficiency in 
their wheat rent, he insisted on a settlement for that sea- 
son. They must, he declared, first make provision for 
their families for the coming twelvemonth and then pay 
him what they could. This done, he squared the ac- 
counts, and the tenants began the year debt free. In one 
case he remitted the wheat rent to the amount of a thou- 
sand bushels; in other cases he helped discouraged farmers 
to remove to Illinois, there to make a fresh start. Thus, 
of the loss attendant on the discontinuance of one form 
of agriculture and the adoption of others, Wadsworth 
assumed the burden to the full extent of his ability. 

Acts such as this, affecting the general welfare, to- 
gether with his participation in politics presently to be 
mentioned, and, most of all, the geniality and simplicity 
of his bearing, made James S. Wadsworth, in the fifteen 
years following his father's death, a citizen whom all west- 
ern New York regarded with pride and untainted affec- 
tion. To the strength and sincerity of this feeling his 
friends and neighbors once, after a long period of suspense 
as to his safety, bore witness in a fashion most moving 
and memorable. Having gone to England in the autumn 
of 1850 to be present at his sister's wedding, Wadsworth 
had taken passage for the return voyage on the steamer 
Atlantic, sailing from Liverpool on December 28. Eight 
days out the shaft broke, and for forty-eight hours the 
vessel was at the mercy of the waves without and the 
thrashing shaft within, while the crew, aided by such help 
as Wadsworth and other passengers could give, struggled 
to set the ice-bound sails. At length getting under way, 
she headed, with successive changes of wind, for Halifax, 
Bermuda, the Azores, and Ireland, finally making port at 
Cork on January 22. 



1851] RETURN FROM ENGLAND 33 

In those days of infrequent ocean service and lack of 
communication by cable, the prolonged anxiety over the 
fate of the Atlantic became more and more agonizing to 
those on shore who were concerned for her safe passage. 
It was not till the middle of February that the good news 
reached New York, and it was March 1 before Wads- 
worth at length reached home. The release from the 
strain of apprehension and the sight of their fellow- 
townsman actually restored to them alive set the people 
of Geneseo wild with joy. When he drove into the town 
from Rochester — where the night before he had taken 
part in a meeting called to set on foot plans for a railroad 
"up the valley" — he was made welcome with the sound 
of bells and cannon, to which in the evening were added 
bonfires and a general illumination of houses. As he nar- 
rated to his neighbors the tale of his adventures, the boom 
of cannon at Mount Morris told of the widening circle 
of rejoicing. The excitement over his return lasted for 
days, perhaps reaching an anticlimax in the thanksgiv- 
ing of the local poet that he had not been thrown 

"A waif on the sands of some cannibal coast," 

but altogether furnishing a remarkable instance of what 
may happen at a time when the threat of peril awakes a 
community to consciousness of what it holds dear. 1 

The affection of which the little world outside the 
Wadsworth gates thus made demonstration was the very 
oxygen of the atmosphere of the home. It was with no 
effort either on his part or on theirs that he made himself 
the companion of his children. They trooped on their 
ponies down to the "home farm" to help their father 
give salt to the cattle; they accepted eagerly the duties 
which he laid upon them and which he designed not only 
to increase their sense of responsibility but also to win 
them irrevocably to the way of life which he himself loved 
so well. And as they grew to manhood and womanhood 

'See the Livingston Republican for March 6, 1851. 



34 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

they became more and more grateful for the comradeship 
and counsel of one whose character showed in turn the 
fruits of work, wisdom, and a happy temper. What 
Wadsworth was as a husband may be gathered from cer- 
tain touchingly intimate passages in the few long-treas- 
ured letters of his sister Elizabeth to his wife. The bride 
of a few months writes to the mother of six children: "I 
do think one cannot be happy unless one is married, but 
I would not say this to any one in the world but you." 
And at another time, after speaking of her husband's 
sweetness and purity of nature and his devoted consid- 
eration of herself, she declares that he will bear compari- 
son — she never referred to her brother as James — "even 
with Cheri himself." 

During their stay abroad the Wadsworths at one 
time passed many pleasant days at Vevey with John 
Lothrop Motley and his family. The two men found 
each other particularly sympathetic, for both were men 
of enthusiasms, with no fondness for cautious and tem- 
pered speech, and their views of the approaching crisis 
in the United States coincided. Ten years later, when 
Motley heard of Wadsworth's death, he wrote of him as 
follows : 

It always seemed to me that he was the truest and 
the most thoroughly loyal American I ever knew, and 
this to my mind is his highest eulogy. ... I often 
thought of him and spoke of him as the true original 
type of the American gentleman — not the pale, washed- 
out copy of the European aristocrat. 1 

The manner in which his character expanded in those 
trying times, from the agreeable and genial man of the 
world, the generous and useful landed proprietor, the 
frank, unaffected, delightful companion, into the hero 
and the patriot, has always impressed me deeply. 2 

1 To Mrs. James S. Wadsworth. 

2 To Thomas Hughes. (J. L. Motley and His Family, Further Letters, 
p. 207.) 



1844] A VAN BUREN DEMOCRAT 35 

The first of the archways of experience through which 
Wadsworth attained to this expansion of character was 
politics. His share in the building up of the Republican 
party in New York State forms, therefore, the next step 
in the narrative. 

II 



An attempt to establish the political status of a citizen 
of New York accomplishes little if it does not indicate 
the wing or faction of the party to which he gives his 
allegiance. Such is the character of these subdivisions, 
moreover, that any one of them is likely to require of its 
adherents a stronger loyalty than the party is able to insist 
upon from them for itself. Hence not only the remark- 
able vicissitudes in political fortunes in the Empire State 
but also the bitterness and intensity of personal feeling 
which has accompanied them. 

Though the elder Wadsworth was a sound Whig, the 
son, in what manner is not known — possibly through the 
visits to Geneseo of "Prince John" — became a Demo- 
crat, an adherent of Martin Van Buren, and a member 
of the group known as Radicals, in opposition to the Con- 
servatives, or Hunkers. Besides loyalty to the principles 
of this group, personal acquaintance and friendly regard 
bound James S. Wadsworth to the able politician who 
sought and sometimes achieved the distinction of states- 
manship. This acquaintance belonged, however, not so 
much to the days of Van Buren's brilliancy as Secretary 
of State, Minister to England, Vice-President, and Presi- 
dent, as to the next decade, when, in retirement at Lin- 
denwald, his estate near Kinderhook, he awaited in vain 
the call to lead his party again and later sallied forth at 
the head of the Barnburners and Free-soilers, in a cam- 
paign the motives of which were a mingling of revenge 
and anti-slavery ardor. 



36 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

A letter 1 which is the fruit of this acquaintance be- 
tween Wadsworth and Van Buren shows Wadsworth's 
political attitude in the early 'forties. It was written to 
the ex-President at a white-heat of wrath on the arrival 
of the news that the Democratic convention of 1844, 
controlled by the pro-slavery element of the party, had 
rejected him on account of his opposition to the annexa- 
tion of Texas and had nominated as its presidential can- 
didate the insignificant Polk. 

My Dear Sir: 

We are all prostrated by the news from Baltimore. 
We do not know what to say, or how to move. It is an 
overwhelming wrong and outrage, which excites equally 
our surprise and our indignation. Here we were com- 
pletely unprepared for it. We expected agitation, ex- 
citement, possibly secession, but never the result we 
have got. Certainly Mr. Butler 2 and his friends gave 
up too soon. If it had been a mere question of State 
preference, such as in their respective states we may sup- 
pose to have been felt for Messrs. Polk, Benton, or Bu- 
chanan, it would have been another matter, but a great 
wrong was to be avenged, a great principle vindicated, 
and it was a principle which the more it was dwelt upon 
and considered, the more deeply and powerfully it would 
have been felt. I can not but think a little more firm- 
ness would have led to a different result, but they on 
the spot were perhaps the best judges and at least their 
fidelity is not to be doubted. I have seen no full ac- 
count of the debates, but I do not perceive that the dic- 
tation and selfishness of the South were properly rebuked. 
They have filled the Executive Chair 44 years, the North 



1 From the Van Buren Papers, vol. LI, Library of Congress. 

2 Benjamin F. Butler, Van Buren's former law partner, had withdrawn 
his friend's name when it appeared that the Southern delegates, ignoring 
Van Buren's claims to nomination by virtue of his record as President 
and his unjust defeat in 1840, were determined to cast him aside. As a sop 
to the friends of the rejected candidate, Silas Wright, senator from New 
York, was given, by a vote almost unanimous, the nomination for Vice- 
President. Wadsworth's letter was written before the news of Wright's- 
rejection of the nomination had reached Geneseo. 



1844] NOMINATION OF POLK 37 

12, and yet because we are not prepared to embark in a 
most unjust and iniquitous war to extend their "Insti- 
tutions" — meaning thereby Slavery — our rights are again 
to be deferred. The only satisfactory feature in this re- 
sult is the defeat of Cass. If that disorganising, treach- 
erous Hybrid had been nominated, I should have "re- 
turned to private life" until after this election, at all 
events. I have a favorable opinion of Mr. Polk and hoped 
to have seen him nominated, but not where he is. What 
will Mr. Wright do? is in everybody's mouth. I shall 
not doubt that whatever he does will be done from the 
purest and most patriotic motives, but I sincerely hope 
he will resign. I can not bear that any one so devoted 
to you and so true to us should reap any share of the 
profits of this insult and fraud. Mrs. W. and my sister 
are so indignant that they reproach me with being too 
calm, and even my Father, feeble as he is, 1 and nomi- 
nally a very good Whig, seems to resent it as much as 
any of us. 

At a moment like this, when you must have so many 
communications to reply to, I shall not expect to hear 
directly from you, but I really wish you would command 
the Major or Smith to write me. Altho' I do not doubt 
that all is "calm as a summer's morn" at Lindenwald, 
I want to know that you are alive and well, after the 
storm. What shall we do with our great meeting called 
for the 6th, which would have been the next thing to 
the Cattle show, if all had gone well? I think we shall 
adjourn it, until we know where we stand. 
I am dear Sir 

with great regard 
Yrs 
JA S S. WADSWORTH 

June 1st 1844 

The impatience shown in this letter at the arrogance 
of Southern Democrats is the first sign of the working 
in Wadsworth of the anti-slavery spirit which from this 
time was to grow steadily stronger. And since during 
the next sixteen years of Democratic control of the 
Federal government that arrogance increased, demand- 

1 He died within the week. 



38 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

ing and obtaining from the North one concession after 
another, mounting from the admission of Texas to the 
Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska act, and the 
Dred Scott decision, Wadsworth and other men of like 
mind gained proportionately in firmness of resistance to 
the extension of slavery. They gained in number, too, 
for each act of aggression on the part of the South was 
further proof that the very existence of the nation was 
thereby threatened; each act made possible a wider ac- 
ceptance of the words of Lincoln and of Seward that 
"a house divided against itself cannot stand" and that 
"it is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and en- 
during forces, and it means that the United States must 
and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave- 
holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation." 

In the case of Wadsworth, the conviction that the 
efforts of the Southern leaders to extend slavery must 
be resisted at every turn came in connection with his 
participation in State politics; the growth of this con- 
viction must therefore be followed through the perplex- 
ing course of the factional quarrels of the New York 
Democracy. 

In the years following the election of Polk, in 1844, 
the antagonism between the two wings of the New York 
Democracy grew rapidly more violent. The Conserva- 
tives, with their leader, Marcy, in Polk's cabinet as Sec- 
retary of War, possessed an advantage which they did not 
allow to sleep. By one deed of punishment after another 
they brought the Radicals to a frame of mind like that, 
it was said, of the farmer who, to rid himself of the 
plague of rats, was willing to burn down his barn. The 
Radicals, accepting the taunting title of Barnburners, 
proceeded to carry out the comparison to the letter. 

It was, however, not chiefly the motive of rule or 
ruin that controlled this faction of the New York De- 
mocracy in its fight against the Hunkers, for its lead- 
ers, Silas Wright, William Cullen Bryant, David Dudley 



1847] THE BARNBURNERS 39 

Field, Preston King, S. J. Tilden, B. F. Butler, C. C. Cam- 
breling (or Cambreleng) , and James C. Smith, stood for 
a more disinterested kind of public service than any to 
which the Hunkers (who were supposed to hunker or 
hanker after office) could possibly make good a claim. 
Indeed, their ablest man, Silas Wright, United States 
senator, who was as remarkable for his honesty and his 
unselfish aims as for his ability, had declined nominations 
tc the Supreme Court of the United States and to the 
vice-presidential place on the Democratic ticket in 1844. 
What animated the Barnburners was allegiance to party 
principles which they felt were being denied both by 
the Southern leaders and by the other faction within 
their own State. Furthermore, support of the Wilmot 
Proviso, which opposed the extension of slavery into ter- 
ritory acquired by the United States, furnished them with 
a bond of union on a moral question particularly appeal- 
ing to men of such character as were here found work- 
ing shoulder to shoulder. Finally, the Barnburners were 
united by a sense of personal loyalty to beloved leaders 
and by a desire to avenge the wrongs unjustly visited 
on the heads of those leaders. Not only was the treat- 
ment measured out to Van Buren in 1844 by the Hunkers 
as yet unrequited; after the State election of 1846, when 
Silas Wright, who had left the Senate to become governor 
in the vain hope of bringing harmony into the New York 
Democracy, was, as a candidate for re-election, defeated 
by the Hunker influence in the State and at Washington, 
there was another score to be settled. 1 The memory of 
this outrage was quickened by Wright's sudden death in 
August, 1847, and there was danger that the Democratic 
State convention, soon to be held at Syracuse, would be 
a battle-ground on which there would be no thought of 
quarter. 

To forestall the chance of collision at the opening of 
the convention, Preston King and Wadsworth, who by 

1 Hammond's Life of Silas Wright, pp. 694-697. 



40 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

this time held a position of influence in the councils of 
the Barnburners, arranged with the leaders of the other 
faction for the appointment of two tellers to call the roll, 
one of them to be named by Wads worth. 1 In this man- 
ner it was hoped to obtain a measure of fair considera- 
tion for the eleven contested seats through which the 
Hunkers had planned to gain full control of the assembly. 
But it proved impossible to settle these cases in commit- 
tee, and in the full convention, though the Barnburners had 
the aid of "Prince John," the devices of their opponents 
overmatched them. How passions rose with the long de- 
bate over the contested seats and what motive fed those 
passions is indicated by an incident of which Wadsworth 
was the hero. It is related by H. B. Stanton, the anti- 
slavery journalist, with all the zest of a connoisseur in 
conventions. 

Some one spoke of doing justice to Silas Wright. A 
Hunker sneeringly responded, "It is too late; he is dead." 
Springing upon a table, Wadsworth made the hall ring 
as he uttered the defiant reply: "Though it may be too 
late to do justice to Silas Wright, it is not too late to do 
justice to his assassins." 2 

The break came, however, not on a point of personal 
revenge, but on the great national question of slavery. 
The efforts of the Radicals to pass a resolution indors- 
ing the Wilmot Proviso were brought to naught by a 
ruling of the presiding officer. "The arbitrary decision 
of their chairman," to quote the Radical version of what 
then happened, "sustained and encouraged by the bois- 
terous support of the Conservatives and the lobby, gave 
rise, at the close, to a scene of unexampled tumult, con- 
fusion, and uproar." 3 As a result, the Barnburners se- 
ceded in a body. 

1 The Syracuse Convention. Its Spurious Organization and Oppression 
and Anti-Republican Action, p. 10. 

2 Random Recollections, p. 159. 3 The Syracuse Convention, p. 14. 



18^8] THE BARNBURNERS 41 

The events of the next twelvemonth — a year which 
abounded in conventions and which gave indications 
clearer than ever before of that breaking up of parties 
which was to be caused by the slavery issue — carried the 
two factions farther and farther apart. The result of 
an appeal issued by a Barnburner mass convention in 
October was the defeat of the Democratic State ticket; 
it followed naturally that, when the national party con- 
vention assembled in May at Baltimore to nominate can- 
didates for the presidential campaign of 1848, two sets 
of delegates appeared, each claiming to be the regular 
representatives of the New York Democracy. Alexan- 
der describes the crisis which this war of local factions 
brought about in the deliberations of the party at large. 

New York held the key to the election; without its 
vote the party could not hope to win; and without har- 
mony success was impossible. To exclude either faction, 
therefore, was political suicide, and, in the end, the vote 
was divided equally between them. To the politician, 
anxious for party success and hungry for office, perhaps 
no other compromise seemed possible. But the device 
failed to satisfy either side, and Lewis Cass was nomi- 
nated for President without the participation of the state 
that must elect or defeat him. 1 

Wadsworth, as a Barnburner delegate, signed the pro- 
test which the Barnburners made to the convention when 
they withdrew and also the appeal which they immedi- 
ately addressed to the State Democracy, justifying their 
action and calling for a convention to meet in Utica to 
make new presidential nominations. In the enthusiasm 
of this gathering, when Martin Van Buren was put at 
the head of a rival Democratic ticket, Wadsworth had a 
part, too, and so it was all through that inspiring cam- 
paign. On the informal ballot for candidate for governor 
at the Barnburners' State convention he received a few 

1 Political History of New York, II, 130. 



42 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

votes, but he at once withdrew in favor of John A. Dix. 
The place then given him on the ticket as elector at 
large was a recognition of the value of his labors and his 
name. 

The climax of this remarkable movement in New York 
politics came in August at Buffalo, when it coalesced 
with similar independent movements in other States, all 
having as their guiding principle opposition to the ex- 
tension of slavery, and when the party was formed which 
took for its motto the words: "Free soil, free speech, free 
labor, and free men." Here was a gathering of persons 
who, besides receiving and imparting that enthusiasm 
and elevation of spirit which are possible when a politi- 
cal issue is blended with a moral issue, possessed leaders 
with skill sufficient to fuse together such diverse elements 
as Free-soilers, Conscience Whigs, Barnburners, and Lib- 
erty men, and to bring them all to agreement on both 
platform and candidates. The achievement of this com- 
posite party in New York on election day was doubly 
gratifying: not only was the Democratic vote divided, 
with the result that Cass was defeated both in the State 
and in the electoral college, but the number of Demo- 
crats who voted for Van Buren constituted more than 
half the party. 1 

Though the Free Democracy, as this new organiza- 
tion called itself, proved but a half-way house to the 
party that was to be permanently founded on the prin- 
ciple of opposition to the extension of slavery, there was 
nothing half-way about the experience it afforded to those 
who participated in its councils. In explicit terms it 
taught them that under certain conditions the political 
benefits of party regularity and success must be sacrificed 
for the sake of principle. Years later, in the troubled 
winter of 1860-1861, as well as in the State campaign of 
1862, when much depended on Wadsworth's individual 

^an Buren received 120,510 votes; Cass, 114,318; Taylor, 218,603. 
—{Whig Almanac, 1849.) 



1848] OSTRACISM OF ABOLITIONISTS 43 

firmness, what he had learned in the Free-soil movement 
stood him in good stead. 

Through the activities of this campaign of 1848, too, 
Wadsworth was brought into touch with the anti-slavery 
men who for years had maintained an unflinching posi- 
tion that had won them much contumely and few votes. 
Though distinct from the abolitionists, who abstained 
from political action, they received a share of the popu- 
lar opprobrium attaching to the hated name which was 
but little less than that borne by the extremists. "The 
charge of 'abolitionism,'" writes Julian, whose affilia- 
tions were entirely with the anti-slavery group, "was 
flung at me everywhere, and it is impossible now to real- 
ize the odium then attaching to that term by the general 
opinion. I was an 'amalgainationist' and a 'woolly- 
head.' I was branded as the 'apostle of disunion' and 
'the orator of free-dirt.'" 1 Some remarks of Wads- 
worth's made during the campaign of 1862 show that 
he, too, had been made to suffer from that animosity 
which is directed most fiercely of all against a man who 
has dared to oppose the interests of his class. "I know, 
for I have sometimes felt, the influence of the odium 
which the spurious aristocracy who have so largely di- 
rected the destinies of this nation for three-quarters of 
a century have attached to the word 'abolition.' They 
have treated it, and too often taught us to treat it, as 
some low, vulgar crime not to be spoken of in good so- 
ciety or mentioned in fashionable parlors." 2 

In explaining Wadsworth's uncompromising position 
on matters connected with the question of slavery, ac- 
count must in a measure be taken of his remoteness from 
the commercial influence prevailing in the Northern cities 
and from his family connections in conservative Boston 
and Philadelphia society. But he was the last man in 
whom such interests, even if close at hand, could have 
availed to deaden the motive that chiefly aroused his 

1 Political Recollections, p. 65. l See p. 160. 



44 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

opposition to slavery — an inborn hatred of injustice and 
oppression. This hatred his ardent temper was con- 
stantly impelling him to express in deed as well as in 
word. Single-minded always, he never could be made to 
feel the weight of reasons for holding back when by going 
forward there was a chance that a wrong could be righted. 
This quality has its obvious defects; but when fighting is 
to be done — and Wadsworth was "ever a fighter" — it is 
as precious as genius. 

A man of this temper, it is hardly necessary to say, 
has, when inspired by his cause, the gift of imparting his 
inspiration to others. Even thus early in his political 
career Wadsworth's friends had recognized this power of 
leadership in him and had begun to give him their votes 
in convention. They knew that if he continued in public 
life — and he certainly showed none of his father's aver- 
sion to it — his winning a position of eminence in the 
party was only a matter of time. 

During the next four years new quarrels occurred in 
both sections of the New York Democracy and new ad- 
justments resulted. The Hunkers divided into Hards and 
Softs; among the Barnburners there was a separation be- 
tween the personal adherents of Van Buren and the anti- 
slavery men. The Softs and the Van Buren men united 
and, sometimes with the aid of the anti-slavery men, op- 
posed the Hards. In general, however, it was for the 
anti-slavery men a period of preparation rather than of 
fighting. But when the false peace of the Compromise of 
1850 was shattered by the Kansas-Nebraska agitation of 
1854, they knew that their time had come. The proposal 
that the people of the Territories should be allowed to 
settle for themselves the question of the existence of sla- 
very within their borders constituted a violation of the 
Missouri Compromise and made possible the spread of 
slavery into regions from which it had been understood 
to be forever excluded. With the whole North roused as 
never before against this new act of aggression on the part 



185C] THE DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICANS 45 

of the South, it was but natural that Wadsworth and his 
friends should first endeavor to make their own Democratic 
party the vehicle of this protest. At the State conven- 
tion of Softs on September 6, 1854, the enthusiasm of the 
delegates seemed to be for a resolute stand, but when it 
came to voting, the anti-Nebraska resolution of the anti- 
slavery men was defeated, whereupon, under the lead of 
Preston King, they left the hall. 1 At the convention of 
1855, after a stormy three days' session, they succeeded 
in bringing the Softs to condemn the Kansas outrages, 
but their work was soon undone, for the exigencies of the 
national Democratic convention of 1856 forced the Softs 
to unite with the Hards on a pro-slavery basis. As a 
result of this union the situation of the anti-slavery 
group was that of a man who finds himself on the steps 
with the house door slammed in his face. 

This remnant, free now to act in accordance with its 
singleness of aim, met in convention at Syracuse on July 
24, 1856. Wadsworth presided. His remarks on taking 
the chair, 2 strongly as they expressed regard for the 
party which he and his associates were now compelled 
to leave, expressed still more strongly allegiance to that 
principle which was "one of the corner-stones of the 
Democracy of New York, a stone of Jefferson granite — 
opposition to the extension of slavery." On this ques- 
tion in 1848 the people of the State had spoken. "I be- 
lieve," continued Wadsworth, "that they are what they 
were then — if I may be allowed the expression — only 
more so. And I am impatient for the day to come 
when they will record this verdict on the issues before 
us." With hearty applause for the speaker, the conven- 
tion proceeded to business. 

The men whom Wadsworth addressed were wise as 
well as devoted and saw that the logic of the situation 
left but one course of action open to them. The Repub- 
lican party in New York was entering upon its third 
1 Political History of New York, II, 197. 2 See Appendix D. 



4G WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

campaign; the year before it had received into its organ- 
ization the great Whig leaders, and it was now preparing 
to sweep the State for Fremont. The members of this 
convention of Democratic-Republicans, as they called 
themselves, having repudiated the Democratic platform 
and the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, pro- 
ceeded to nominate Fremont, indorsing, in an address 
and resolutions reported by David Dudley Field, the prin- 
ciple of opposition to the extension of slavery for which 
Fremont stood. They thus in effect announced them- 
selves ready to receive an invitation from the Republi- 
cans, and they concluded their business by appointing 
a State committee, of which Wadsworth was chairman, 
"to further the objects of the convention." * 

As anti-slavery men it was, perhaps, not difficult for 
the loyal members of this group to join hands with other 
opponents of the hated institution; but it was hardly 
to be expected that they should accept without ques- 
tion the personal leadership of the former Whig chief- 
tains, William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed, against 
whom they had fought for years. A body so compact 
and homogeneous was none too likely under the best 
circumstances to disintegrate, scattering its components 
through the larger organization; as it was, the habit of 
opposition to Seward and Weed continued in force and 
held them together, the nucleus in New York of what 
were later known as Radicals, or Black Republicans. 

The tendency of these former Democrats to rally by 
themselves was manifested as soon as they were received 
into the fold at the Republican State convention, which 
assembled at Syracuse on September 17. The nomina- 
tion of Wadsworth for governor was the recompense of 
reward which they desired; but they commanded barely 
a third of the delegates, and Weed, though he and Wads- 
worth had always been personally on friendly terms, was 

1 Proceedings of the Democratic-Republican State Convention at Syra- 
cuse, July 24, 1856. 



1856] COALITION WITH REPUBLICANS 47 

otherwise minded. Wishing a man of Whig antecedents 
to head the ticket, he had chosen John A. King, the son 
of Rufus King. On the first ballot the vote stood: King, 
91; Wadsworth, 72; Draper, 23; Clark, 22; Harris, 22. 
The followers of the last three, who had belonged to the 
Whig party, were easily persuaded to throw their votes 
to King; but the Wadsworth men stood firm. The result 
of the second ballot was: King, 158; Wadsworth, 73. 
"It was not soon forgotten," writes Alexander, "that in 
the memorable stampede for King, Wadsworth more than 
held his own." 1 

In another instance that presently occurred of the 
unwillingness of the anti-slavery Democrats in the Re- 
publican party to submit to Whig leadership, Weed's 
handling of the difficulty furnishes an excellent example 
of the skill which made him so formidable. "To allay 
any bitterness of feeling which the nomination of John 
A. King might occasion," says Alexander, "it was pro- 
vided that, in the event of success, the senator to be 
chosen by the legislature in January, 1857, should be 
of Democratic antecedents." 2 The strength shown by 
Wadsworth in the September convention naturally made 
him a candidate for this office, and his supporters were 
active. Of the men whose names were under considera- 
tion, however, Preston King made the strongest appeal. 
Not only was his anti-slavery record unimpeachable, but 
his service in Congress had given him a national position 
which the others lacked. Though Weed contended that 
the understanding in September had been for Preston 
King, he avoided the appearance of dictation by referring 
the matter to a caucus of the Republican members of 
the legislature who had formerly been Democrats. Their 
choice of King was decisive. 3 



1 Political History of New York, II, 236. Wadsworth refused to be a 
candidate for nomination as lieutenant-governor, but accepted a place on 
the ticket as elector at large. 

1 Ibid., II, 243. ' Ibid., H, 244, 245. 



48 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

The friction thus begun in the Republican party in 
New York between the leaders of Whig and the leaders 
of Democratic antecedents was a difficulty destined to 
increase and, as in the case of other factional difficulties 
in the Empire State, to invade the national convention 
of the party with far-reaching results. The labor of 
Weed for years had led up to the nomination of Seward 
as the Republican candidate for President in 1860. As 
the delegates to the convention began to assemble at 
Chicago, the opposition to Seward among the old Barn- 
burners gained importance by the accession of Horace 
Greeley. The objection which had most weight with 
them and which now they urged most plausibly on the 
men from other States was Seward's weakness in New 
York by reason of his record in matters of State poli- 
tics. "At Chicago," writes H. B. Stanton, "Seward 
encountered the opposition from his own State of such 
powerful leaders as Greeley, Dudley Field, Bryant, and 
Wadsworth. The first two were on the ground and very 
busy. The two latter sent pungent letters that were 
circulated among the delegates from various States. 
The main point of the attack was that Seward could not 
carry New York." 1 

If the estimates of Seward's weakness in his own 
State were perhaps exaggerated, his connection with 
Weed and the fear that if one were in the White House 
the influence of the other would be as dominant in Wash- 
ington as it had hitherto been in Albany played their 
part in undermining his strength with the delegates from 
other States. The gubernatorial candidates in Pennsyl- 
vania and Indiana declared that with Seward a candi- 
date they could not carry their own State elections in 
October. Thus it befell that the man who was the rec- 
ognized leader of his party was passed by and Abraham 
Lincoln chosen. In the assessment of conventions long 
years of able service signify often merely the disadvan- 

1 Random Recollections, p. 214. 



1860] STATE CONVENTION 49 

tages of a "record," and the award is given to the man 
who, by reason of few achievements, has few foes. 

As the time for the State convention approached, 
Wadsworth declined to allow the use of his name in 
connection with the nomination for governor. His rea- 
sons he gave to E. N. Packard, of Nunda, in a letter 
dated July 31 : 

I cordially thank you for the friendly feelings which 
you express as to my nomination by the Republicans at 
the approaching election. I should not on this impor- 
tant occasion refuse to serve our party in any capacity 
in which I might be deemed useful, but I consider the 
renomination of Gov. Morgan as due to him for the 
faithful performance of his duties, and at the same 
time as the best course to pursue, and maintain the 
integrity of the party. I think the best elements in 
the party are now united in his favor. If we abandon 
him, the powerful interests, controlled by and connected 
with the corrupt legislation of last winter, 1 may force upon 
us a candidate of their choice. This would be, and 
ought to be, fatal to the party in this State. For these 
reasons I have refused to have my name presented to 
the convention as a candidate, and should, if a delegate 
myself, earnestly urge the renomination of Gov. Morgan. 

When the convention assembled, Morgan was renom- 
inated by acclamation. Wadsworth's name for the third 
time found a place on a party ticket as presidential 
elector. 

With the election of Lincoln the question as to who 
should represent New York in his cabinet became one of 
moment to the group of men whom the Nao York Herald 
called " the Van Buren Democratic Buffalo Free-soil wing 
of the Republican party," 2 for it was understood that 
Seward would not accept a place at the hands of his suc- 

1 The grants of charters for street railroads in New York City. Governor 
Morgan vetoed them all but one, but the legislature passed them over his 
veto. See Brummer's Political History of New York State during the 
Period of the Civil War, pp. 23, 41. 

2 Quoted by Alexander, II, 395. 



50 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

cessful rival. Late in November a number of them met 
in New York and formed a committee to recommend to 
the President-elect the most eligible of the New York 
Radicals. 1 Extracts from letters written in this connec- 
tion by H. B. Stanton to Senator Salmon P. Chase, of 
Ohio, whose claims, as another Radical, were also urged 
by them for some other place in the cabinet, furnish inter- 
esting testimony as to the position which Wadsworth's 
political activity had given him. 

The names most frequently mentioned by the sound 
Republicans of our State, for a seat in the Cabinet, are 
Mr. Greeley, David Dudley Field, Jas. S. Wadsworth, 
and Wm. Curtis Noyes. . . . Messrs. Field, Noyes, and 
Wadsworth are all able men. . . . The old Barnburners, 
who were in the fight of 1848, and are now sound and 
honest Republicans, would doubtless prefer either Mr. 
Field or Mr. Wadsworth. ... In fine, if we are to have 
a man of democratic antecedents the first choice I think 
would be Mr. Field. If he cannot be had, then Mr. 
Wadsworth. 2 

Of Mr. Wadsworth I have room to say but little. He 
is one of the most reliable men in the State. He was 
with us heart and soul in the Buffalo fight of '48. . . . 
His integrity and courage are unquestionable, and he is 
one of the most popular men in New York. 3 

Though the news that Seward had after all consented 
to serve in the cabinet was soon made public, the men 
with whom Wadsworth stood had still plenty to fight for 
and unabated zest for the fray. The scramble for office in 
the first weeks after Lincoln's inauguration involved them 
in a struggle with the conservatives of the party in New 
York, the issue being the ascendancy of one group or the 
other in State affairs. Charles A. Dana has described 
a scene at the White House when Wadsworth acted as 

1 Brummer's Political History of New York State during the Civil War, 
p. 129. 

2 Correspondence of S. P. Chase. — (Annual Report of the American His- 
torical Association, 1902, II, 485.) 3 Ibid., H, 488. 



1861] FACTIONS IN NEW YORK 51 

spokesman for a group of New Yorkers, to whose pro- 
tests Lincoln replied: "One side shall not gobble up 
everything. Make out a list of places and men you 
want, and I will endeavor to apply the rule of give and 
take." 1 

Though the contest was spirited, its importance has been 
dwarfed by the giant events that overshadowed it. Of the 
status of the two factions, however, when the places were 
filled, record must be made, for their relative strength 
has a bearing on the State campaign two years later. The 
Seward-Weed wing obtained nearly all it sought for ex- 
cept the most important office of all — the collectorship of 
the port of New York. It also achieved a triumph in de- 
feating Horace Greeley, who sought to succeed Seward as 
United States senator. On the other hand, Weed's pres- 
tige was seriously damaged because, in order to defeat 
Greeley, he was obliged to throw over his own candidate, 
William M. Evarts; furthermore, the loss of the custom- 
house patronage was a severe blow. Hiram Barney, the 
new Collector, was a Radical and the friend of Chase, 
who had become Secretary of the Treasury. The means 
of communication and influence thus established between 
New York and Washington was of the utmost value to 
the Black Republicans, as they were derisively called; it 
brought them into close touch with the administration 
and made it impossible for Seward to have his way un- 
opposed in matters affecting State politics. 

One last event before Wadsworth was summoned by 
the call to action in another field requires chronicle here. 
Early in February, 1861, he was chosen one of the eleven 
commissioners elected by the legislature to represent New 
York at the Peace Conference. Assembling in Wash- 
ington at the call of Virginia, delegates from twenty- 
one States debated for nineteen days in a vain endeavor 
to frame such a constitutional amendment as would sat- 
isfy both North and South and thus save the Union, 

1 Recollections of the Civil War, p. 3. 



52 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

which seemed in the very act of dissolution. Wadsworth 
took no part in the speech-making that prolonged the 
sessions of the conference; but David Dudley Field, the 
chairman of the New York delegation, William Curtis 
Noyes, and James C. Smith put before the convention 
in language plain and firm the resolve of the radical 
Republicans that the fruits of their well-won victory 
at the polls should not be compromised away. This 
firmness, though it showed no bravado, was of the kind 
that stands ready, if necessary, to make good every 
word with a blow. Field, in fact, proposing as a part 
of the constitutional amendment a declaration that no 
State can secede, said: "The people of my section wish 
to know whether we can compel the obedience of a State 
if every man in it undertakes to refuse obedience. They 
believe that power to exist in the Constitution now. If 
there is any doubt about it, they wish that power dis- 
tinctly asserted." * 

The promptness with which this resolution was voted 
down was only one of many happenings of the confer- 
ence that proved how wholly disinclined were the South- 
erners to yield one inch of the ground which a political 
domination covering many decades had taught them to 
regard as their own. The compromising done, there- 
fore, was on the part of those Northern delegates who 
were willing to make almost any sacrifice of party prin- 
ciple for the sake of the Constitution and the Union. 2 In 

1 Chittenden's Report of the Proceedings of the Peace Convention, p. 396. 

2 The speech of William E. Dodge, who represented the merchants of 
New York, reads like a parody of the arguments constantly used by those 
who shrink from introducing a moral issue into politics on the ground that it 
will " hurt business" : 

"I am unused to public discussion or arguments, but I am a business 
man, and I take a business view of this subject. I can see as clearly as I 
can see the sun at noonday the causes of our present embarrassment. I 
believe I can see equally clear how those causes may be removed. . . . 

"The delegates from New England in this conference seem to be the 
most obstinate and uncompromising. They aver that they cannot agree 
to these propositions because their adoption involves a sacrifice of principles, 
that New England is opposed to slavery and will not consent to put it into 



1801] THE PEACE CONFERENCE 53 

the proposed constitutional amendment as prepared in 
committee and as voted upon by the conference, the 
wishes of the South were triumphant everywhere save in 
the provision prohibiting the African slave-trade. 1 

Though the victory, such as it was, lay with the 
"Union-savers" — a Union which seven States had al- 
ready repudiated — the no-compromise men brought away 
from this much-ridiculed Peace Conference a conviction 
that soon proved of vastly more value than any point 
which they might have gained by a majority vote. The 
frank talk which these men from North and South had 
exchanged in the sessions of the conference and in 
hotel lobbies had, for the anti-slavery men, put beyond 
question the fact that the Southerners meant to fight. 
The corollary of this conviction — that the North must 
prepare itself to encounter them on the field of battle 
— gave to the handful of radical Republicans from New 
York and Massachusetts, amongst all those who loved 

the Constitution, nor to its extension. They say the people hate slavery 
and will not for that reason accept these proposals. 

" I do not believe one word of this. I know the people of New England 
well: they are true Yankees; they know how to get the dollars and how to 
hold on to them when they have got them. They are a shrewd and cal- 
culating as well as an enterprising people; they understand their interests 
and will protect them. They will not sit quietly by and see their property 
sacrificed or reduced in value. Once show them that it is necessary to adopt 
these propositions of amendment in order to secure the permanence of the 
government and to keep up the property and other material interests of 
the country, and they will adopt them readily. You will hear no more 
said about slavery or platforms. They will never permit this government, 
which has contributed so much to their wealth and prosperity, to be sacri- 
ficed to a technicality, a chimera." — (Chittenden, Peace Convention, pp. 
194, 195.) 

1 In the final voting, which was done by States, the vote of New York 
was divided on six of the seven articles of the proposed amendment. The 
loss of the vote of the State was due to the unexpected absence of Field, 
the chairman, who was called to attend an important case before the Su- 
preme Court. His behavior in leaving for this reason occasioned much bit- 
terness of feeling among the men who with him would have made a major- 
ity of the State delegation and thus thrown the vote of the State against 
compromise. See the majority report of the New York commissioners, 
signed by Field, Noyes, John A. King, Wadsworth, A. B. James, and J. 
C. Smith, with the statements appended to it. — (Chittenden, Peace Con- 
vention, pp. 585-004.) 






54 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

the Union, the key to the future. For the next few weeks 
there were almost none to heed their message; but when 
at last war broke out it was they, with their vision long 
since clarified and their unyielding temper, who were 
ready, and it was the militia of their States that were the 
first armed troops to reach the capital of the nation. 

On April 11, 1861, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a let- 
ter to his friend Charles Sumner, senator from Massa- 
chusetts, enclosing a check for two hundred odd dollars; 
the sum, he explained, was the remnant of an unsettled 
account between himself and the United States that went 
back to the days of his consulship at Liverpool, and he 
begged Sumner to turn the check over to the United 
States Treasury. "It is full time," he wrote, "to rectify 
the mistake, for the probabilities seem to be that the gov- 
ernment to which, if anywhere, I am responsible, will soon 
crumble away, leaving me to burn my fingers forever with 
money not my own." * The feeling of distrust and despair 
which prompted Hawthorne's act — the sense that the end 
of things was at hand — formed a trouble that hung low 
over many another mind in the North during these early 
days of April. With the first shot against Sumter, fired 
within twenty-four hours of the writing of this letter, 
dawned the era of war, and with it the day of Wads- 
worth's destiny. He was then more than fifty-three 
years old. 

1 Pierce-Sumner collection, Harvard College Library. 



CHAPTER III 

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR: BULL RUN 

When, following close upon the news of the surrender of 
Sumter, came Lincoln's call for troops to put down resist- 
ance to the authority of the United States Government 
in the Southern States, all the hesitation and uncertainty 
of these days of waiting were dispelled. As one man, the 
people of the North declared that the Federal Union must 
be fought for and preserved. Bearing their part in the 
"glorious uprising" of the people, men of influence and 
affairs in New York City came together by spontaneous 
action to do quickly and thoroughly the work that must 
be done to save the government at Washington. As the 
week wore on, thrilling events, coming in rapid succes- 
sion, lifted the people to higher and higher levels of patri- 
otic devotion. On Friday, April 19, the march of the 
splendid Seventh Regiment down Broadway through a 
"tempest of cheers two miles long" ' stirred the city as it 
had never been stirred before; later in the day came the 
news that the Sixth Massachusetts had been fired upon 
in the streets of Baltimore; on Saturday, at a mass- 
meeting in Union Square, the war feeling, now at its height, 
was unified for action by the organization of the Union 
Defense Committee of the City of New York. Wads- 
worth had been among the first to spring forward with 
offers of help, and the value of his services was now 
recognized by his being made a member of its executive 
committee of thirteen. 

While the "solid men of Wall Street," thus backed 
by public sentiment, were perfecting their organization 

1 Theodore Winthrop, in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1861, p. 745. 
55 



56 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

and raising money, Wadsworth found a special piece of 
work that needed immediate attention. The land route 
to Washington had been blocked by the destruction of 
the railroad bridges and track north of Baltimore; a 
sea route by way of Annapolis must be improvised and 
boats must be chartered to convey troops, provisions, 
and men for repairing the railroad. On this very Sat- 
urday morning a telegram from the colonel of the New 
York Seventh at Philadelphia announced his intention 
of obtaining a steamer and going to Annapolis by water 
and asked that a vessel loaded with provisions be sent 
thither immediately. 1 The task of procuring a vessel for 
this purpose Wadsworth at once took in hand. It was 
perhaps unusual for an up-State squire, versed in herds 
and crops, to undertake a maritime negotiation of this 
sort; but the act is highly characteristic of the spirit 
that prevailed in those fervid days. He went searching 
about among docks, examining boats and interviewing 
owners, and on Sunday evening brought back from Eliz- 
abethport the Kill von Kull, a double-end, side-wheel 
ferry-boat of large capacity. 

For the next three days Wadsworth and the other mem- 
bers of his sub-committee were busy stocking the ferry- 
boat with materials needed at Annapolis. On Wednes- 
day he was able to report to the executive committee 
that the following morning at seven the Kill von Kull 
would leave for Annapolis, carrying provisions, clothing, 
horses, and one hundred laborers with tools to lay rails 
and to keep open the railroad from Annapolis to Wash- 
ington. At the same time he gave them his draft for 
seventeen thousand dollars to cover the cost of char- 
tering the boat. 2 Later in the day, when rumors of 

1 History of the New York 7th Regt., I, 478. 

2 Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Union Defense Committee, 
deposited at the N. Y. Historical Society. For the expenses which Wads- 
worth incurred, amounting to $15,588, he was later reimbursed by the com- 
mittee. See also War of the Rebellion, Official Records, Navies, series I, 
vol. IV, 432, and Union Defense Committee, pp. 17, 18. 



1861] JOURNEY TO ANNAPOLIS 57 

Confederate privateers in Chesapeake Bay reached New- 
York, it was necessary to appeal to the commandant of 
the Brooklyn navy-yard, who provided the Monticello, 
which he had been arming, as a convoy. On Thursday, 
April 25, the vessels got under way, arriving at Annapolis 
two days later. 

Wadsworth himself, meanwhile, deeming that an 
ocean voyage on a ferry-boat was no part of his duty 
of patriotism, had taken the train for Philadelphia. 
There, from conversation with railroad officials, he got 
some light as to the causes of the demoralization which 
had for the last five days kept Washington isolated from 
the rest of the country. At the end of the day he wrote 
back to New York as follows: 1 

Phila., April 25, 11 p. m. 

Dear Sir: — 

Upon reflection, I decided that I could better exe- 
cute my commission by going to Annapolis by Havre 
de Grace in advance of my ship. 2 I have just had an 
interview with General Patterson. He did not know 
where any of our ships or troops were, what was the 
condition of the Annapolis and Washington R.R., or 
what was being done about it. I have since seen Mr. 
Felton, the superintendent of the Baltimore Road. He 
informs me that the Massachusetts Sappers and Miners 
are at work on the road, have about eight miles finished, 
and twelve to complete, on which there are no very 
heavy repairs. On my telegraphic advice this morning, 
he sent me a gang of regular track hands. He thinks 
my tools and materials furnished by Mr. Sloan will be 
much needed. He thinks there are about eight thou- 
sand troops in Annapolis, plenty of raw provisions, but 
much confusion and some suffering. General Patter- 
son is to send on a quarter-master from the regular 

1 This letter is printed, with some trifling errors, in the Union Defense 
Committee, p. 150. Lincoln's order that the Pennsylvania troops which 
had advanced to Cockeysville should return was the result of his purpose 
to give no opportunity for the disloyal sentiment in Maryland to make 
headway. 

2 See general map at the end of the volume. 



58 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

army with me in the morning. I saw the orders to with- 
draw the troops from Cockeysville, "to prevent unnec- 
essary excitement and irritation in Baltimore," drawn 
by Cameron at the request of the President. I blushed 
for my country and our President as I read them. 

All the efficiency, energy, and capacity here is found 
outside the military organizations. Thompson, President 
Pennsylvania Central, and Felton, have accomplished al- 
most all that has been done. They and other private 
citizens here and elsewhere have saved the Capital. 

As the Capital is now safe and the Government seems 
to be without a plan for the future, I think the heavy 
expenses of our Committee in chartering steamers should 
be reduced. It is inexpedient to send forward large re- 
inforcements until the organization of the army is com- 
pleted, or at least made better than it is at present. 
Has any one authority to send home such steamers as 
are not needed at Annapolis? 

I will write you as often as I find time, and you can 
read to the Committee whatever you think worthy of 
their attention. 

Truly yours, 

JAMES S. WADSWORTH. 

Simeon Draper. 



The impatience with official slowness and incompe- 
tence which this letter betrays reveals how little Wads- 
worth or any other man caught up by the war enthusi- 
asm that was sweeping the North could at the moment 
understand and make allowance for the difficulties under 
which Lincoln and his advisers were laboring. Not only 
were they new at their work, but they could not tell 
whom to trust. Resignations from the departments and 
from the army and navy were of daily occurrence. 
Virginia was almost certain to join the Confederacy; 
Maryland was doubtful. Moreover, cut off from the 
North, they could not imagine to what pitch of devo- 
tion to the Union the spirit of the people had risen. Their 
hands were tied; the dignity of the government must 
suffer itself to be succored by the efforts of private indi- 



1861] AT ANNAPOLIS 59 

viduals and of States as prompt and loyal as Massa- 
chusetts and New York. 

The confusion which Wadsworth found when he 
reached Annapolis on April 26 and the irritation which 
that confusion bred were described by the correspondent 
of the New York Times: 1 

The Annapolis and Elk Ridge Railroad, eighteen miles 
in length, having one locomotive, two baggage and two 
passenger cars, constructed in primeval times, is the sole 
direct link of the United States Government with nine- 
teen millions of people, with its army and navy, with 
its diplomatic corps in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North 
America. There ought to be some new rolling-stock at 
once put upon this little branch, and then two mails a 
day should be sent from .Washington via Annapolis and 
Havre de Grace, and a telegraphic communication kept 
up through the same points. The fact is, there is a uni- 
versal disorder and want of organizatoin through the 
whole route; a perfect waste of provisions at one point 
and a dearth at another — no regularity or system any- 
where. The soldiers are fired with a noble enthusiasm, 
but even the most ideal patriotism cannot stand long 
against bad salt beef, stale bread, and universal careless- 
ness and want of order. 

What a pity if this grand movement of patriotism 
should all come to an end through bad commissariat 
and stupid routine! Thank Heaven! I said, when I 
saw the Kill von Kull appearing in the Annapolis Har- 
bor, laden with the bounty of our generous merchants — 
these are business men's arrangements for the emergency. 

Mr. Wadsworth was all ready to meet her, and a 
grand supply she had — tea, coffee, cheese, biscuit, hard 
bread, hams, etc., etc., with some light wagons which 
will be very acceptable for sick and wounded. 

By Saturday, April 27, when the Kill von Kull reached 
Annapolis, things were beginning to get into shape under 
the vigorous management of General Benjamin F. Butler. 
The railroad had been taken possession of by the govern- 

1 May 3, 1861. 



CO WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

ment and the repairs so well begun by the Massachu- 
setts troops could be speedily finished by Wadsworth's 
gangs of workmen. As rapidly as possible the provisions 
were unloaded from the Kill von Kull, conveyed to the 
railroad station, and put into cars. On Sunday afternoon 
the train started for Washington, stopping every two miles 
or so, wherever a detachment of troops was posted, to 
distribute food. "The abundant supply," wrote Thur- 
low Weed, who made the journey with Wadsworth, "was 
received by men who had been twelve, eighteen, and 
twenty-four hours without rations with avidity not un- 
like that witnessed in menageries when the animals are 
being fed." : As soon as he had completed his distribu- 
tion, Wadsworth started homeward, reaching New York 
on May l. 2 

During Wadsworth's absence, the executive body of 
the Union Defense Committee, at the sessions which it 
held often twice a day, had been pushing on its arrange- 
ments for forwarding troops to Washington. In the 
first two weeks, when it was a question of sending off 
militia organizations for the defence of the capital, their 
singleness of zeal and their complete adequacy to the 
situation were indispensable. But later, when the Fed- 
eral and the State governments each in its own way 
undertook to raise troops for a longer term of service, 
these two sources of authority and the volunteer com- 
mittee, working at cross-purposes, became tangled be- 
yond any method of extrication save that of the shears. 

1 Life of Thurlow Weed, II, 341. 

2 The manner in which fact mellows into anecdote is illustrated by the 
form which this effort of Wadsworth's takes in General E. D. Townsend's 
Anecdotes of the Civil War, p. 12: 

"At about this time General Scott received a telegram from General 
James S. Wadsworth in New York, asking him if a vessel-load of cheese 
would be acceptable. I well remember the expression of satisfaction with 
which the general dictated a reply to be sent that it would be; for it was 
really a question of some concern whether the army commissary and the 
private grocery and provision stores would have subsistence enough for citi- 
zens and troops until the way could be opened from the North. The cheese 
arrived safely and was issued to the troops." 



1861] THE CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS Gl 

On April 16 the State legislature had authorized the 
raising of thirty-eight regiments to serve for two years, 
and Cameron, the Secretary of War, on May 3 accepted 
them all. On May 4 Lincoln called for forty regiments 
of volunteers to serve for three years; but the quotas 
required of the respective States were not announced 
till twelve days later. When this call — another indica- 
tion of the state of incomprehensiveness in which the 
administration still dwelt — proved ridiculously dispro- 
portionate to the war enthusiasm of the North, the 
government had not the courage or the power to curb 
the offerings of the loyal States. True, the Secretary 
of War, by ways of exasperating deviousness, sought to 
cut down the number of regiments which the governors 
of States were to supply; but the President, with reck- 
less disregard of official responsibility and of orderly 
administrative procedure, gave permission for raising 
regiments and brigades to any pertinacious applicant 
for military distinction. The result was a high degree 
of irritation among the State executives, for the officers 
so commissioned, appearing in their respective States, 
began to recruit men for their organizations in direct 
competition with the efforts of the State authorities. 
Thus at the very outset the inexperience of Lincoln and 
the indirectness of Cameron operated to prejudice against 
the new administration a number of the best of the North- 
ern governors — precisely the men whose support was most 
needed in this people's war. 

To help in establishing a working arrangement in this 
matter Wadsworth made a trip to Washington. The 
letter which he wrote to Governor Morgan on May 23 
reveals his discouragement: 

I do not know that I can give you any further infor- 
mation as to the entanglements at Washington. The 
truth is, the Government is weak, miserably weak at 
the head. The President gets into at least one serious 
scrape per diem by hasty, inconsiderate action. While 



62 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

I was there he accepted X 's regiment and regretted 

it an hour after. He (X ) is a disgraced man, as was 

well known to General Scott, at the Navy Department, 
and to Mr. Cameron ; but they were not consulted. The 
President is undoubtedly committed to some extent to 

Y , but regrets it too late, as he thinks. If I was 

Governor and X brought the order to me he will 

bring to you, I should advise the President that I had 

no objections to Colonel X 's leaving the state and 

remaining out of it indefinitely, but that I objected to 
his taking citizens of this state out of it under his con- 
trol. I should likewise reply to the enclosed circular 1 
that I should pay great respect to its valuable sugges- 
tions and that I had entire confidence that the Presi- 
dent in making appointments from this state would be 
governed by the same excellent rules. I think after 

what he now knows of Y and X , and might 

have learned at once, he would see the point. You will 
of course regard these suggestions as only half serious. 

The readiness with which Wadsworth had addressed 
himself to these matters of military management, dis- 
playing good judgment in all his dealings and giving 
orders with the air of one who expected obedience as a 
matter of course — these evidences, taken with his position 
as a representative of the western part of the State, made 
it seem proper that one of the high commands of the 
New York troops should be given to him. Under Cam- 
eron's first requisition the State was entitled to two major- 
generals. The first of these positions fell properly to 
John A. Dix, who was eminent as a citizen and who had 
from 1821 to 1828 served in the regular army; the second 
Morgan offered to Wadsworth. 

Although Wadsworth, in common with thousands of 
others, was eager, at the country's call for men, to offer 
his services and, if need be, his life, he would himself 
have preferred that his career as a volunteer officer begin 

1 The circular referred to was that issued by Cameron on May 22 urging 
governors of States to give commissions to no one of doubtful morals or pa- 
triotism. 122 W. R. (War of the Rebellion, Official Records), p. 227. 



1861] A MAJOR-GENERAL'S COMMISSION 63 

with some lower rank than the highest. But he was 
obliged to consider the situation as it existed in New 
York at the moment, with the danger that the governor 
might be forced to name some one of even less suitable 
qualifications than himself. "My own confidence in the 
propriety of the appointment," he wrote to James C. 
Smith, "has not got beyond the point that 'I am better 
than a worse man.' " He did not, therefore, reject the 
proposal, and in the letter which he sent to Morgan on 
May 5 he stated his attitude with entire frankness: 

As it is possible that I left my position in regard to 
the appointment at your disposal of Major-General some- 
what ambiguous, I beg leave to restate it in writing. 

As against a graduate of West Point or an officer of 
the regular army of fair reputation, for example, and 
capacity, I can on no account allow my name to be 
presented as a candidate. As against men who have 
no advantage over me but a more recent connexion with 
the Militia, and a fresher knowledge of military techni- 
calities, I do not think it would be presumptuous in me 
to offer my name. 

Thanking you for the friendly terms in which you 
spoke of this subject in our recent interview, I beg leave 
to assure you that whatever decision you may come to 
will be cordially acquiesced in by me. 

The question of Wadsworth's fitness, however, was 
soon obscured by a new issue, and the course of events 
from it was highly characteristic of the early days of the 
war. Cameron, at about the time that he had notice 
from Governor Morgan of the organization of the first 
seventeen regiments of New York volunteers into two 
divisions, of which the first was to be commanded by 
Dix and the second by Wadsworth, reversed his first 
decision and insisted that general officers must receive 
their commissions not from the State but from the Fed- 
eral government. His act, which was not only justifi- 
able but highly necessary, increased for the moment the 



04 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

difficulties of the three-cornered misunderstanding be- 
tween the authorities at Albany, the Union Defense 
Committee, and the War Department. Morgan, insist- 
ing on his constitutional power to make the appoint- 
ments, used arguments that had a strongly Southern 
sound; Cameron averred that unless the governor 
yielded this point he would accept no troops at all from 
New York. 1 But in this, as in the other matters in 
dispute, it soon became plain that the administration, 
growing stronger every week, must in the end have its 
way, and Wadsworth, recognizing this fact, did what he 
could to relieve Morgan of embarrassment by sending 
in his resignation. When finally the controversy was 
adjusted by Cameron's accepting Dix, the first of Mor- 
gan's appointees, and giving him a commission as major- 
general of United States Volunteers, Wadsworth was 
probably neither surprised nor disappointed. 2 

During the weeks of uncertainty preceding this deci- 
sion, the fighting tradition of the family, which had in 
his youth identified him with the militia and which sub- 
sequently would have led him into the Mexican War but 
for his wife's stronger claim, 3 had blossomed into full 
vigor. The ways of comfort and serenity in which the 
years of his manhood had been passed had not too deeply 
overlaid the pioneer spirit acquired in youth from his 
father and uncle. The strength of will, the resourceful- 
ness in action which those early years had trained him 
in had been awaiting for the best part of a lifetime such 
a summons as this. During many decades the material 
growth of the country had set a premium upon the quali- 
ties developed by trade and its cognate affairs in the 

1 122 W. R., p. 250. 

2 The appointments to the same rank of Butler and Banks in Massachu- 
setts, made as the result of somewhat similar conditions, proved far less 
desirable than that of Dix. 

3 It is related that he had with difficulty been restrained from giving 
the name of Monterey to his youngest son, who was born a few days after 
the capture of that city by the United States troops. 



1861] THE CALL OF PATRIOTISM 05 

city; here was a call for the capacities bred in men by 
knowledge of the land and out-of-doors leadership. Pos- 
sessing these, Wadsworth knew that he possessed also, 
as he wrote to Smith, "a certain amount of energy and 
administrative capacity." All these faculties now cried 
aloud for use. 

But infinitely more compelling was the simple call 
of duty and patriotism. In this crisis of his country's 
need, when he saw the Union assailed by the power of 
slavery, the foe that he had so long been fighting — in 
this crisis the earnest and straightforward nature of the 
man could see no course open to him but to offer and 
to risk his- life in bearing arms for her preservation. 1 
Well beyond the age limit set for volunteers, he could 
not think of himself as a person accepting exemption 
for that or for any other reason. And if men of small 
means could afford to leave their families, was not the 
shame greater to him if with his affluence he failed to 
do likewise? So dominant and intense was his mood 
that he did not hesitate at the appeals of his sons in 
turn that they should be permitted to join the army, 
and General Keyes reports his saying at this time: "If 
my father were alive now, and would not devote his 
mind, body, and estate to this cause, I could not respect 
him." 2 

With this driving purpose to fight for his country, 
what Wadsworth did was highly characteristic. Briga- 
dier-General Irvin McDowell had just been put in com- 
mand of the troops south of the Potomac, with head- 
quarters at Arlington, the pillared mansion belonging to 
Robert E. Lee which stands out so boldly to the view 
from Washington. 3 Thence McDowell, an admirably 

1 "Amid the guarded words of most Northern leaders at the outburst of 
the war, it was refreshing to hear one loyal man who did not hesitate to 
avow that he hated the rebellion and slavery, and meant to fight them wher- 
ever he could." — (Editorial on Wadsworth in the New York Times, May 21, 
1864.) 

• Fifty Years' Observation of Men and Events, E. D. Keyes, p. 437. 

3 The Lee estate is now a national military cemetery. Most of those 
interred there lost their lives in the Civil War. 



66 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

trained and thoroughly capable soldier, was expected soon 
to lead his men to battle, for already the cry of "On to 
Richmond" was beginning to be heard. Of him Wads- 
worth asked an appointment on his staff as aide. At the 
request of a man ten years older than himself to serve 
him in a position of this character McDowell was natu- 
rally embarrassed. For aides he desired young men who, 
besides being quick and active, could be ordered about 
without any deferential picking and choosing of phrases, 
and who could, if necessary, be worked for twenty-four 
hours a day. Manifestly a gentleman of fifty-three, whose 
white hairs made him appear even older and who was re- 
garded everywhere in New York as one of the foremost 
citizens of the State, might not be treated in this manner. 
On the other hand, the intelligence, discretion, and per- 
sonal force that a good aide must have were certainly 
Wadsworth's; and these qualities, together with his de- 
termination to begin the business of soldiering in such 
modest fashion, at last prevailed against McDowell's re- 
luctance. Before a week had gone it was apparent that 
no one on the staff was more active and efficient. 

The duties to which Wadsworth now addressed him- 
self brought him to the very centre of things military 
and showed him still more clearly the respects in which 
the administration had not yet grasped the magnitude 
of the task before it. In one way its failure was not 
strange, for, generally speaking, executive ability had 
hitherto not been regarded as the strongest of a man's 
qualifications for public service, and at this particular 
moment the men responsible for the preservation of the 
government had all won their experience in the school 
of small things. Although, as the next few years proved, 
there was amongst them capacity in abundance only 
awaiting opportunity, the men actually trained in the 
control of large affairs were at this time to be found 
exclusively in the business world, and there chiefly in the 
circle of railroad management. This disadvantage, es- 
pecially strong at the beginning of the contest, told of 




BRIGADIER-GENERAL IRVIN McDOWELL. 

From a photograph taken in July, 1861. 



1861] McDOWELL'S DIFFICULTIES 67 

course equally against North and South, but a disquali- 
fication peculiar to the North was its aversion to the 
whole matter of war. It is an historical commonplace 
that martial affairs had no part in the absorbing indus- 
trial life of the Northern States. When, as a matter of 
national preservation, the need for them came, the people, 
with true Yankee persistence and conscientiousness, put 
the bitter business through; then they went back gladly 
to their pretermitted ways of peace. 

Such fundamental facts, when realized, make possible 
a more vivid comprehension of the trying life at Mc- 
Dowell's head-quarters in the weeks before Bull Run. 
McDowell himself, in his testimony before the congres- 
sional committee on the conduct of the war, five months 
after the defeat for which he had been made a scape- 
goat, indicated, though without resentment or tinge of 
personal chagrin — for he was both a true soldier and a 
man of the world — the preposterousness of a situation 
in which, from the inability of the administration to 
withstand the public clamor for an advance, he was 
obliged to "organize and discipline and march and fight 
all at the same time." l "I had no opportunity to test 
my machinery; to move it around and see whether it 
would work smoothly or not. In fact, such was the 
feeling that when I had one body of eight regiments of 
troops reviewed together, the general [Scott] censured 
me for it, as if I was trying to make some show. I did 
not think so. There was not a man there who had ever 
manoeuvred troops in large bodies. There was not one 
in the army; I did not believe there was one in the whole 
country; at least I knew there was no one there who had 
ever handled thirty thousand troops. 2 I had seen them 
handled abroad in reviews and marches, but I had never 

1 Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 1863, pt. 
2, p. 37. (To be referred to hereafter as C. W.) 

2 The United States regular army in 1860 numbered only 16,000 men. — 
(Report of the Secretary of War, 36th Cong., 2d Sess., Senate Ex. Doc. 1, 
H, 189.) 



68 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

handled that number, and no one ever had. I wanted 
very much a little time; all of us wanted it. We did 
not have a bit of it. The answer was: 'You are green, 
it is true; but they are green also; you are all green 
alike.' " x 

Russell, the correspondent of the London Times (for 
whom a sensitive Northern public had in store the sob- 
riquet of "Bull Run," because, forsooth, his picture of 
the flight from the battle held them up to the laugh- 
ter of Europe), visiting McDowell at Arlington early 
in July, found the head-quarters staff of the army shel- 
tered in four small tents and recorded the commanding 
general's apologetic explanation that "there was great 
jealousy on the part of the civilians respecting the least 
appearance of display, and that as he was only a briga- 
dier, though he was in command of such a large army, 
he was obliged to be content with a brigadier's staff." 2 
Again, on July 16, the day on which the Union army 
began its advance toward Manassas, and five days before 
the battle of Bull Run, Russell met McDowell at the rail- 
road station looking for two batteries which had been 
ordered to Washington but which had "gone astray" 
somewhere on the road. "I was surprised to find the 
General engaged on such duty, and took leave to say so. 
'Well, it is quite true, Mr. Russell; but I am obliged to 
look after them myself, as I have so small a staff, and they 
are all engaged out with my head-quarters.'" 3 It is not 
strange that the commander of an army thus casual in its 
organization, as he drove the correspondent back to his 
lodgings, "although he spoke confidently, ... did not 
seem in good spirits." 

The desperateness of the venture upon which an ig- 
norant and tyrannous public was now sending the Union 

1 C. W., pt. 2, p. 38. 

2 My Diary North and South, W. H. Russell, II, 145. 

3 Russell's Diary, II, 187. The date under which this entry is made 
is incorrectly printed as July 19. 



1861] BLACKBURN'S FORD 69 

army had been from the first apparent to the members 
of McDowell's staff, and, as soon as the army moved, 
was plain to all who could reason from the evidence 
brought them by their eyes and ears. The enlisted men 
strayed from the line of march at the sight of a tempt- 
ing blackberry patch and at every opportunity emptied 
their canteens in order to get a fresh supply of cool water. 1 
The officers in their sphere of duty were equally hard to 
control, and the unfortunate affair at Blackburn's Ford, 
into which Brigadier-General Tyler, leading the advance, 
allowed himself to be drawn, showed that even com- 
manders of divisions might prove to be of little reliance 
in the hour of battle. (See map, page 80.) 

Tyler, a typical instance of the men who at the be- 
ginning of the war were given high places, was a soldier 
over sixty years of age who, though a West Point grad- 
uate, had left the army more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury before. On the morning of July 18 Wads worth 
took to him McDowell's order to proceed to Centreville 
and to keep up the impression that the Federals were 
moving on Manassas, where the Confederate army under 
Beauregard was stationed, but not to bring on a gen- 
eral engagement. Carrying out McDowell's instructions, 
Wadsworth did his best to make Tyler feel the force of 
the warning against too great zeal, for on that day it was 
important to gather further information as to the posi- 
tion of the enemy on the Union left. 2 But Tyler, una- 
menable to directions, pushed ahead to Bull Run at 
Blackburn's Ford and there proceeded to dispose his 
forces as if to make an attack on the strong body of 
Confederates posted to defend the crossing. Though 
McDowell's adjutant-general, Fry, and his chief of engi- 
neers, Barnard, repeatedly called Tyler's attention to his 
wilful disregard of the commanding general's orders, their 
remonstrances were in vain; the demoralizing effect of 
the repulse which the troops soon suffered was out of all 
1 McDowell's testimony, C. W., pt. 2, p. 39. 2 Ibid., p. 46. 



70 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

proportion to the loss in killed and wounded. For this 
excess of boldness Tyler sought to atone three days later 
by an excess of caution even more disastrous. 

The encounter at Blackburn's Ford, however, was 
not the only circumstance of ill augury. Beauregard, 
on the other side of Bull 'Run, had had ample opportu- 
nity to be well informed as to the strength and position of 
the Federal force, and with the lapse of time the chances 
that he would be joined by Johnston's army from the 
Shenandoah Valley grew greater. But McDowell was not 
yet ready to attack. The information which he must 
first obtain he had no well-organized and reliable means 
of getting; moreover, volunteers and militia, with the 
ignorance of raw troops, were wasting their provisions, 
and the supply train from Washington was unconscion- 
ably slow in arriving. Two long and harassing days en- 
gaged the labor of the head-quarters staff in remedying 
these consequences of defective organization, while the 
army lay quiet about Centreville, its ears strained to 
catch the faint sound of locomotives at Manassas Junc- 
tion which might signify the arrival of Johnston's army 
to reinforce Beauregard. It was not till the evening of 
Saturday, July 20, that McDowell called his division 
commanders together to give them their orders and to 
explain to them the movements depending for success 
on their prompt co-operation. 

In spite of his care, there was at the very outset of 
the day of battle a fatal delay. Tyler, with costly cau- 
tion, moved his advance so slowly that the two divisions 
behind him, which had a long march to make in order 
to cross Bull Run at the Sudley Springs ford, some miles 
up-stream, were held back for full three hours. The 
time set for the advance was two o'clock on Sunday 
morning, but when at sunrise McDowell and his staff 
reached the blacksmith's shop at the corner of the road 
by which the troops were to march to the right, Tyler's 
division was not yet out of the way. Wadsworth was 



1861] BULL RUN 71 

despatched to Tyler to try to stir him to greater activity 
and to remind him that this was the time when he was 
expected to go forward to attack. 1 Then, coming back 
to the blacksmith's shop, he gave help to McDowell, who 
personally as well as through the efforts of his staff was 
doing his utmost to expedite matters there. When at 
last the road was clear, the troops which had been held 
back pressed forward with the rush of a stream when an 
obstruction has been removed, and soon regiments were 
swinging by at double-quick. Already the day was hot, 
and the road-side began to be strewn with blankets and 
overcoats. This rush, however, proved of short duration, 
for the advance of the flanking column was led by the 
deliberate Burnside. Indeed, at the Sudley Springs ford 
his horses and men were found by McDowell's staff re- 
freshing themselves in the stream and taking a good rest. 
Having at last got under way again, after marching a 
mile or so they received the first shots of the enemy, and 
by half-past nine the battle had begun. 

The stereotyped characterization of the first Bull 
Run disposes of it as a contest remarkable for the pict- 
uresque if disheartening display of what may be ex- 
pected when untrained volunteers and militia are under 
fire for the first time. The variety in the Federal uni- 
forms, which ranged all the way from the brilliant Zou- 
ave costume to a color which proved disastrously like the 
Confederate gray; the courageous advances made by one 
regiment after another without co-ordination; the firm- 
ness of the Confederate brigade which won for its com- 
mander the immortal epithet of "Stonewall"; finally, 
that indescribable panic twenty-seven miles long in which 
fear played her maddest pranks with an army that had 
become a mob — all these we are familiar with as historic 
details in the battle which, containing so many touches 
of comedy, awoke the nation to the tragedy of war. And 
in the way of reflection we content ourselves with Sher- 

1 McDowell's testimony, C. W., pt. 2, p. 43. 



72 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

man's comment that in all the war Bull Run was the 
battle "best planned and worst fought." x A far dif- 
ferent thing is it, however, to live through the day in 
the experience of an aide like Wadsworth, who has on 
his shoulders a part of the responsibility of seeing that 
plan carried into execution, and who, finding one officer 
after another inadequate to the performance of his duties, 
perceives that he must put all his might into multiplying 
himself to make good these dozens of deficiencies. For 
him the business was like a prolonged nightmare in which 
a single, struggling human will is baffled and overwhelmed 
by superhuman forces. 

In truth, McDowell and all his staff were similarly 
at the mercy of fate. Having sent an aide to the dila- 
tory Tyler at his post at the turnpike bridge to press 
his attack, and another to hurry up the rear of the turn- 
ing column, "McDowell, like Beauregard, rushed in per- 
son into the conflict, and by the force of circumstances 
became for the time the commander of the turning col- 
umn and the force actually engaged, rather than the 
commander of his whole army." 2 

As for Wadsworth, the kind of work that he took 
upon himself is illustrated by his part in the charge of 
the Eighth New York. When, advancing upon the Henry 
House hill, the regiment made a wrong turn to the left 
and was exposed to a severe flank fire, Wadsworth, dash- 
ing after it, rectified its course, went with it up the hill, 
and ordered it to charge the woods on the right. Three 
companies answered his call, with handsome results, 3 but 
then the regiment encountered, from the belt of pine 
woods along the southeastern edge of the plateau, the 
steady fire of Brigadier-General T. J. Jackson's brigade, 
"standing like a stone wall." Thus assailed, it quickly 
became demoralized, and that was the end of its ser- 
vice as an organization during the day. "Staff officers," 

1 Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman, I, 187. 

2 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, I, 187. 3 2 W. R., p. 388. 



1861] BULL RUN 73 

reported Colonel Porter, the brigade commander, "could 
be seen galloping rapidly in every direction, endeavoring 
to rally the broken Eighth, but this laudable purpose was 
only partially attained, owing to the inefficiency of some 
of its field officers." ' One of their officers, Captain 
Woods, who did his full duty, came under the eye of 
Wadsworth as he hurried back and forth trying to get 
the troops into some sort of order. "I witnessed," Wads- 
worth took the trouble to write to him afterward, "the 
manner in which you rallied such of your regiment as you 
could induce to follow you, and led them into action under 
a terribly severe fire. I saw no officer expose himself more 
freely in front of his men." 2 

The words apply equally well to Wadsworth himself. 
The crisis of his first battle revealed him as belonging 
in the class of such Revolutionary fighters as Stark 
and Wayne — a man of natural courage and of natural 
powers of command, whose instinct bade him ever to 
lead and, leading, to rely upon others to follow. "Well 
do I remember," writes a lieutenant of the Thirteenth 
New York, "how he came flying down the steep hill by 
the 'Old Stone House' at Bull Run, and led the Thir- 
teenth (under a heavy fire from the enemy's battery 
that commanded the hill) into action." 3 

Wadsworth was later concerned in getting infantry 
supports for the batteries of Ricketts and Griffin, which 
had been advanced by McDowell's order to a position 
on the Henry House plateau. So great were the diffi- 
culties in communicating orders, so uncertain was the 
reliance to be placed on officers or men, and so exigent 
were the needs of the moment that it was impossible to 
make any properly organized movement to this end. 
The most that could be done was to throw forward a 
regiment or two at a time. The batteries, in their ad- 
vanced position, were soon lost, and the remainder of 

1 2 W. R., p. 384. - History of the 10th N. Y., p. 241. 

3 Unidentified newspaper clipping. 



74 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

the battle resolved itself into a series of attempts to 
recapture them. In organizing these assaults Wads- 
worth played his part in helping to form and to send 
forward some of Franklin's regiments and, after their 
repulse, some of Sherman's. He was in the thick of 
the fighting, his horse was shot under him, and more 
than once when a regiment fell back in confusion he 
seized its colors and called on the men to rally to the 
flag. 

At last, a little before three o'clock, an advance was 
made that promised permanent success. The Confed- 
erates were driven completely from the open plateau 
and fresh Union troops were about to come on the field. 
The balance of victory, so long unsettled, seemed to dip 
in favor of the Federals. But in the belt of pines Jack- 
son's brigade stood firm, and Wadsworth and others 
who had seen its stubborn fighting realized that trouble 
might still be expected from that quarter. At this mo- 
ment, when the arrival of reinforcements on either side 
would be decisive, a brigade commanded by Colonel 
Elzey of Johnston's army appeared without warning on 
the extreme right of the Union army. As it charged, 
the Federals heard for the first time the sharp, pulsating 
"yaai, yai . . . yaai, yaai, yai . . . yaai !" which they soon 
came to know as the "rebel yell" — the battle-cry that 
"lasts with the voice of Stentor and with the horn of 
Roland." x Wadsworth happened to be with the troops 
that received the first discharge of musketry. "It was 
very severe," he testified, "and then they followed it 
up immediately with a very bold charge right on the 
field." 2 At the same time Jackson, having held his 
men in check for three hours, sent them with irresistible 
force against the advancing Federal centre. Under this 
double attack the Union troops completely gave way. 
Though McDowell and his staff took the colors of one 
regiment after another in the hope of rallying the men 

1 The Long Roll, p. 93. 2 C. W., pt. 2, p. 48. 



1861] BULL RUN 75 

about them, every such effort was futile. The soldiers 
who in the morning had constituted an army were now 
individuals seeking the banks of Bull Run and the safety 
of the other side. Ordering the regulars, who stood firm, 
to guard the rear, McDowell rode off toward Centreville, 
where the reserves were stationed. 

As Wadsworth followed he did not yet need to aban- 
don himself to despair at this reverse in the fortunes of 
the day. With the fresh troops at Centreville a stand 
might still be made, and behind them the men now 
plodding along the road, showing as yet no signs of panic, 
might be reformed. But as he drew near Centreville 
the aspect of things became less promising. Here the 
road was filled not only with army impedimenta but with 
light vehicles that had brought spectators from Wash- 
ington to view the battle from a safe distance. Worse 
than all, panic had set in. Shot from a Confederate bat- 
tery had reached the road at one place and rumors of 
pursuit by the much-dreaded "black horse cavalry" made 
the danger seem greater at every moment. As twilight 
came on the thought of the long road still to be covered 
magnified these terrors tenfold, and McDowell, seeing 
that his army was ruled by a commander more power- 
ful than he, wisely decided to let the mob flow on to the 
safety of Washington. The reserve brigades, which were 
steady, could be relied upon as a rear-guard, but nothing 
else could be counted on. 

It was in this hour of defeat that Wadsworth dis- 
played other qualities no less characteristic of him as a 
soldier than his courage. His concern was less for the 
able-bodied fugitives than for the dead left unburied 
where they had breathed their last and for the wounded 
remaining on the field of battle and in the hospitals at 
Centreville, soon to fall into the hands of the enemy. 
Filled with a sense of all there was to be done here, he 
helped to find places in wagons for men slightly wounded 
and encouraged the Federal surgeons to continue in their 



76 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

duty toward those who could not be moved. Then, 
when he had accomplished all that was possible, he 
joined the crowd streaming toward Washington, being 
accompanied by Montgomery Ritchie, his son-in-law, 
who, as aide to the commander of the reserves, had been 
at Centreville all day. 

When these two had made their slow way through 
seven miles of disorganized army to Fairfax Court House 
it was long after midnight, and, as Wadsworth had been 
in the saddle since before daybreak, they decided to stop 
here to refresh themselves and their horses and if might 
be to get a little sleep. Crowded though the tiny ham- 
let was with wounded and others whose fatigue had 
prevailed over their fears, Wadsworth and Ritchie finally 
succeeded in obtaining a place where they could throw 
themselves down for a brief rest. 

The next morning, Monday, July 22, they found that 
the fugitive mob had vanished and that the last regi- 
ments of the rear-guard were taking their departure. 
During the night there had been no pursuit, and there 
was a chance that the heavy downpour of rain, which 
gave promise of continuing all day, would dampen the 
ardor of the victorious Confederates. Taking advantage 
of this chance, Wadsworth decided to remain where he 
was and to devote himself to the needs of the wounded, 
some hundred in number, whom he found left at Fairfax 
Court House with none, in that devil-take-the-hindmost 
flight, to care for them. He forthwith began to search 
the small settlement through to procure the food and 
comforts that these sick men required and to provide 
means of transportation for them. Ritchie, meanwhile, 
set out for Washington to obtain from McDowell or 
from the Secretary of War a request for a flag of truce 
under which the wounded at Centreville might be brought 
within the Union lines. 

Fortunately for Wadsworth's undertaking, the tor- 
rents of rain did not cease during all of Monday. Not 



1861] BULL RUN 77 

a Confederate appeared on the road from Centreville, 
and he was successful in getting off to Washington, on 
foot or in wagons, practically all the men of whom he 
had assumed charge. He himself did not take his leave 
until the Confederate cavalry came in sight on Tues- 
day morning, July 23; and when J. E. B. Stuart and 
his men reached the Court House at 9.30 a. m. they 
found there only three wounded officers. 1 Three civilians, 
come out from Washington to ask for permission to search 
the battle-field for the body of Colonel Cameron, brother 
of the Secretary of War, were also encountered and made 
prisoners. As for Wadsworth, he had not travelled far 
toward Washington when he met Ritchie bringing the 
request for a flag of truce, which he had finally suc- 
ceeded in obtaining from Cameron. 2 Turning his horse 
back toward Centreville, Wadsworth accordingly pro- 
ceeded thither with the document. 

The unwillingness of Secretary Cameron, however, 
to do anything that might be twisted into a recognition 
of the Confederate States of America had led him to 
address his letter in such a fashion that Major-General 
J. E. Johnston refused to receive it. After waiting all 
night Wadsworth was advised to go back to the Union 
lines, whither in due time an answer, if there was one, 
would be forwarded. 3 When he reached the Federal 
pickets he found that the long train of ambulances sent 
out to meet him had given up waiting and gone back to 
the city. To disappointment at the failure of his mis- 

1 2 W. R., p. 995. 

2 The civilians captured by Stuart, who were kept prisoners at Richmond 
for some months, came without written authorization from Cameron be- 
cause, according to General Johnston's report of what they said, "a rule es- 
tablished by their authorities forbids flags of truce in such cases" (2 W. R., 
p. 995). To others making the same attempt a few days later Cameron 
gave a letter addressed "To whom it may concern." Stuart, in refusing 
their request, returned it to them "for the reason that its object does not 
concern me, nor any one else that I am aware of, in the Confederate States 
of America." — (Marginalia, or Gleanings from an Army Note-Book, by 
Personne, p. 78.) 

3 Russell's letter to the London Times of July ii, 1861. 



78 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

sion was added disgust at the futile craft of the Secretary 
of War, a feeling that could have been little abated when 
he read the Richmond papers that taunted the Federals 
with making no efforts to relieve their wounded or to 
bury their dead. 1 

For Wadsworth the campaign of Bull Run ended 
with his arrival at McDowell's head-quarters at Arling- 
ton on the afternoon of July 24, the last man, it is safe 
to say, to come in from the field. He had, indeed, served 
his apprenticeship in battle, and the regard that Mc- 
Dowell felt for his service was expressed not only in 
the complimentary acknowledgment of the commander's 
official report but also in a recommendation to the Presi- 
dent that he be made brigadier-general of volunteers. 

Not because it tells any new circumstance of his 
part in the fight, but for what it shows of the pride which 
his family took in him, a letter written a month later 
by his eldest daughter to her aunt in Europe will serve 
to sum up the story of Wadsworth at Bull Run: 

. . . You know all about our disgraceful defeat, but 
you are too far off to have felt anything like the sense 
of disgrace that we feel who had husbands and fathers 
sharing in this odium, who had seen the grand army 
advance with such feeling of certainty that there could 
be but one result, and that Victory. That Monday 
evening when the terrible news came (after the first re- 
port of "a great success"), I do assure you that our 
bitterest tears were shed . . . from the humiliating sense 
of shame, of intense mortification, that our much vaunted 
Northern troops, with their "earnestness of purpose" 
and "sense of right" should have run away. 

I am told that strong men on the field of battle, 
after vainly attempting to rally our disorganized troops, 
wept from sheer despair; and in the streets of Washing- 
ton, as the haggard soldiers came pouring in with fresh 
details about the disgusting retreat and shameful panic, 

1 The taunts were repeated by General Johnston in his Narrative, p. 65, 
most unjustifiably, since he could hardly have failed to know of Wadsworth's 
mission. 



1861] BULL RUN 79 

men forgot their manliness and turned away to hide 
their emotion. 

But it has been a lesson to us that we needed. The 
great fault, they say, lay with the volunteer officers, not 
the men. Some of these officers behaved most shame- 
fully. Two colonels of regiments were met seven miles 
from their men, flying to Washington. Father, in car- 
rying orders, constantly came on regiments and parts of 
regiments with only a lieutenant or some minor officer 
in command. This will be changed now, and officers 
have to undergo a strict examination before being com- 
missioned, and the most rigid discipline, which was very 
much neglected before the battle. 

You must read all Russell's letters to the London 
Times; they are correct in most particulars though much 
exaggerated. Monty saw a great deal of him in Wash- 
ington, dining and breakfasting with him constantly; he 
says he is the most brilliant, entertaining person, but 
withal the most prejudiced John Bull. Consequently 
the London Times has said the most scathing things about 
us since our defeat, speaking of our army as entirely 
composed of New York rowdies and Boston Abolition- 
ists, and saying that the Volunteers have proved them- 
selves utterly worthless in opposing the "Gentlemen of 
the South." 

I send you some newspaper paragraphs about Father 
which you may not have seen. They appeared in the 
New York press soon after the battle. There is but one 
story of his conduct, and you can imagine how proud 
we are of him. McDowell told Monty that he was the 
youngest man among them, and capable of enduring 
more fatigue on horseback. 1 The day of the battle he 
was in the saddle twenty-four hours and Monty twenty. 
Monty was with the reserve, which did not move as 
soon as the main army; he was on the staff of Colonel 

(of the regular army), who commanded the reserve. 

This Colonel was superseded on the field of battle 

for drunkenness; the staff was of course dispersed, and 
Monty joined Father. They were the last officers who 

1 At the age of twelve or thirteen Wadsworth had ridden all the way 
from Geneseo to New York, helping his uncle drive thither a herd of cattle. 
Life in the saddle was always as much a matter of course with him as it is 
with any ranchman. 



80 



WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 



passed through Fairfax Court House; Father remained 
till Tuesday to look after the wounded, and Monty 
rode into Washington on Monday afternoon to get a 
flag of truce from the War Department. This Father 
carried to their lines; he was kept waiting by the road- 
side for eight hours, and then vouchsafed no answer, 
as the communication was not properly addressed. . . . 
Father has now been made a brigadier-general, and 
Monty 1 is going to try and get into one of the new regi- 
ments. Craig will, I think, go as one of Father's aides. 
. . . Almost everyone feels that we must make great 
effort and great sacrifice; but unfortunately there are 
a great many "Copperheads" 2 in our midst who are 
doing their utmost to discourage enlistment, and with 
too much success. This the newspapers hardly dare to 
speak of, but it is true. 

1 Montgomery Ritchie, having helped to recruit the regiment known as 
the Wadsworth Guards, accepted an offer to join Burnside's expedition to 
North Carolina, but ill health forced him to return to the North in the 
summer of 1862. Later he served on the staff of Major-General Augur, 
division commander in Banks's expedition to Louisiana, and displayed gal- 
lantry before Port Hudson; but disease again interrupted his service, and 
in May, 1864, continued ill health compelled him to resign. He died at 
Geneseo six months later. 

2 The use of this word at this time antedates by several months the ear- 
liest occurrence hitherto noted by historians. 




CHAPTER IV 
UPTON'S HILL 

The commission as brigadier-general of volunteers of- 
fered to Wadsworth he was at first inclined to refuse, 
for his brief military experience had made him less will- 
ing in August to accept a position of that rank than 
he had been in May to receive a major-generalship at 
the hands of Governor Morgan. But his friends on 
McDowell's staff, whose admiration he had won by zeal 
as a worker and by courage and leadership on the field 
of battle, were urgent that he should take the place, and 
he was assured that a graduate of West Point would be 
assigned to duty as adjutant-general of the brigade which 
he would command. 1 With this understanding he ac- 
cepted the offer, and a commission was issued to him 
bearing the date of August 9. He was presently assigned 
to a brigade composed of the Twelfth, Twenty -first, 
Twenty-third, and Thirty-fifth New York regiments, 
with head-quarters at Arlington. 2 In the organization 
of his staff he was not able, after all, to obtain as 
adjutant-general the promised West Pointer, for the War 
Department had put a close restriction on details of offi- 
cers away from their commands in the regular army; 
but when Lieutenant John A. Kress, who had been 
three years at the military academy, became one of his 
aides, he had no reason for regret on that score. He 
also found a place on his staff for his second son, Craig, 
who was twenty years old. 

The fruits of the lesson of Bull Run were already be- 

1 Letter of Brigadier-General John A. Kress, U. S. A. (retired). 

2 The composition of the brigade was subsequently changed by the with- 
drawal of the 12th N. Y. and the addition of the 20th N. Y. 

81 



82 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

ginning to appear; the cry of "On to Richmond!" had 
given place to the watchword of "organization," and 
with a submission almost pathetic the chastened North 
waited upon the word of McClellan, the young major- 
general whose early successes and personal popularity 
were regarded as omens full of hope for the future. 
McDowell, accepting his defeat with the philosophy of 
a good soldier, had been willing to serve as division com- 
mander under his junior, and the assignment of Wads- 
worth's brigade to his division was a welcome arrange- 
ment to both men. 

Drill now was the order of the day, though from all 
the commands large detachments were made for work 
on the defences of Washington. Necessary as the con- 
struction of these fortifications was — for the outposts of 
the enemy were at Munson's and Upton's Hills, 1 four 
miles from Arlington — the troops little relished what 
seemed to them preparations for a defensive campaign. 
In spite of all Wadsworth's efforts, the ardor of his 
pickets frequently got them into skirmishes with those 
of the enemy. That the "rebel flag" should be allowed 
to remain flying within six miles of Washington and in 
full view from the dome of the Capitol was an indignity 
under which not only the army, but the whole North 
chafed. 

A letter from Craig to his mother gives a glimpse of 
camp life at Arlington late in September: 

I am safely installed in the office of aide to the Gen- 
eral. I hold a Second Lieutenant's commission in Ker- 
rigan's Irish regiment. I am to be transferred to the 
Thirty-Fifth regiment in a few days and expect to rank 
better. I sign my name with A. D. C. added about 
sixty times a day — you have no idea how nice it looks. 
McClellan reviewed McDowell's division on Monday 
last. He said it was the most satisfactory review he 

1 For places referred to from this point in the narrative to the battle of 
Gettysburg, consult the general map at the end of the volume. 











brevet MAJOR CHARLES f. wadsworth. brevet colonel CRAIG \V. WADSWORTH. 





BREVET MAJOR JAMES W. WADSWORTII. BREVET MAJOR MONTGOMERY RITC HIE. 

SONS AND SON-IN-LAW OF JAMES S. WADSWORTH. 



1861] OCCUPATION OF UPTON'S HILL 83 

had had during the campaign. I suppose it was all 
owing to my military knowledge. Father is not as stout 
as when he was in New York, but notwithstanding I 
never saw him looking better. It is all bone and muscle 
now. We have the front this week, but there is noth- 
ing doing, there have been only two or three shots in 
the last forty-eight hours. . . . 

The proximity of the enemy to Washington which 
had continued through September was at last brought 
to an end, though not by any effort of McClellan's. It 
was his opponent, Joseph E. Johnston, who, seeing that 
the Confederate army was not then and was not likely 
to be in condition to undertake offensive operations, 
gave the order for the outposts to retire from their ad- 
vanced position. On September 28 Wadsworth's pickets 
reported that the force at Munson's Hill was withdraw- 
ing. Setting out at once with two companies on a re- 
connoissance, Wadsworth found Munson's Hill and also 
Upton's Hill, a little under a mile to the north, aban- 
doned, except for a small detachment of cavalry which 
retired on his approach. The stove-pipe on wheels and 
the pump-logs doing duty as cannon which were found 
there were probably indicative not so much of the pov- 
erty of the Confederates in artillery as of their love for 
a joke. In the evening of the same day Wadsworth was 
ordered to move his brigade thither; and here, where 
the Union line was farthest advanced toward the enemy, 
he and his men were stationed for the next five months. 
The well-built Virginia farm-house on the hill, belong- 
ing to Charles H. Upton, Wadsworth occupied as his 
head-quarters. 1 Colonel Regis de Trobriand, commander 
of the New York Fifty-fifth, having ridden out to Up- 
ton's Hill the day after Wadsworth's command took 
possession, described the scene there as follows: 

1 Upton had remained loyal to the Federal government. He claimed 
election as representative from the Alexandria district to the existing Con- 
gress, but as the election had taken place in May, 1861, after Virginia had 
seceded, the House refused to seat him . 



84 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

I found General Wadsworth under the roof of the 
pillaged farmhouse. ... A few broken stools were all 
there was left of the furniture. Some doors taken off 
their hinges served for tables; some boards picked up 
in the garden answered for benches. The Confederates, 
who were still occupying the house the day before, had 
written their names with charcoal upon the defaced walls 
of all the rooms. They had added, after the manner of 
soldiers, rough sketches, among which the favorite was 
the hanging of Mr. Lincoln. An alteration in the ex- 
planatory legend was all that was needed to turn the 
picture into the hanging of Mr. Jefferson Davis, and this 
our soldiers did not fail to do. 

The house was surmounted by a sort of observatory, 
from which one saw in all its details a scene of the most 
varied character. About the premises stacks of arms, 
surrounded by soldiers lying on the ground or digging 
in the vegetable garden; regiments successively taking 
their positions in line; a dozen cannon in battery, the 
cannoneers at their guns watching the valley, the offi- 
cers sweeping with their field glasses the wooded hori- 
zon, the caissons in the rear, the teams on the inner 
slopes of the hill. In front, the Leesburg Road, upon 
which galloped here and there staff officers followed by 
their orderlies, and the isolated hillock called Munson's 
Hill, from the top of which already floated the Federal 
flag. 1 

To the task of making this post a secure point for 
defence Wadsworth at once devoted himself. Besides 
strengthening the works on the hill, he sent the axemen 
out to fell the trees along the front so that there would 
be less chance for the enemy to approach unseen and 
greater opportunity for the use of artillery. The man- 
agement of such pioneer tasks was a matter of course 
to him, and the speed with which his men did their 
work elicited the public praise of McClellan. 2 It was 
no less characteristic of Wadsworth that, though the 
needs of the camp required every stick of wood possible, 

1 Quatre Ans de Campagnes a l'Armee du Potomac, I, 106, 107. 

2 Campfires of the 23rd N. Y., p. 34. 



1861] VISITORS AT UPTON'S 85 

he would not suffer the axe to be laid to any of the oaks 
and chestnuts that immediately surrounded the Upton 
house. 

During the next weeks many other visitors followed 
Colonel de Trobriand to the house at Upton's. Before 
the brigade had been in camp a fortnight, Russell, in 
quest of copy for the Times, arrived, lunched with Wads- 
worth on camp fare, and then from the lookout surveyed 
the "fine view, this bright, cold, clear autumn day, of 
the wonderful expanse of undulating forest lands streaked 
by rows of tents which at last concentrated into vast 
white patches in the distance towards Alexandria." 1 
With an eye by no means friendly to the North, he 
noted that "the country is desolate but the camps are 
flourishing, and that is enough to satisfy most patriots 
bent on the subjugation of their enemies." Among the 
visitors was Mrs. Wadsworth, and as a result of her 
housewife's inspection of the premises there presently 
arrived sundry supplies contributing to the comfort of 
her husband and her son. 

Early in November Wadsworth's brigade was strength- 
ened by the arrival of the Ulster Guard. This regiment, 
which as the Twentieth New York State Militia he had 
in May vainly urged to enlist for two years, had now 
been reorganized as the Eightieth New York Volunteers, 
though it was familiarly known by its numerical designa- 
tion in the State force. The story of its arrival at night 
at Upton's Hill, as told by the lieutenant-colonel, Theo- 
dore Gates, and his characterization of Wadsworth, give 
details that make vivid the camp life of these months: 

Officers and men were glad to hear the command 
"halt!" for the march had been a long and fatiguing 
one, and they were tired, hungry, and thirsty. Not one 
of us knew anything about the commander into whose 
hands we had just fallen, and the locality was a perfect 
terra incognita to all of us. We knew we had reached 

1 Russell's Diary, II, 375. 



86 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

our destination, because we were halted by a guard 
drawn up across the road in front of us, and an officer 
directed us to file to the left, into an open field, and biv- 
ouac. We marched into the field, and went to work 
in the darkness to make ourselves as comfortable as 
possible, but the command was by no means in an ami- 
able mood. Each officer and man knew we had marched 
fifteen miles to reach a point less than eight from our 
starting place, and that there were two routes no more 
than half as far as the one we had been required to 
take, and the consequence was we had arrived at our 
destination too late to cook coffee or make any arrange- 
ments for a comfortable night's rest. 

But this feeling underwent a very sudden and un- 
expected change. Lanterns were seen approaching from 
what appeared to be a house, a few hundred feet west 
of us, and a kind, cheery voice called out, "Twentieth, 
where are you? " The interlocutor was Brigadier-General 
James S. Wadsworth, who captured the affections of the 
entire command by his evident anxiety for their com- 
fort and by the practical way in which he manifested 
it. He had the men supplied with fuel, and the whole 
regiment was furnished with an abundance of splendid 
hot coffee which he had had prepared for it as soon as 
its approach was announced at his headquarters. He 
did not turn this good work over to some of [his] subor- 
dinate officers and get back into his comfortable house, 
out of the chill November air, but he personally super- 
intended it, and left only when he was assured the men 
were properly provided for; many a poor fellow went to 
sleep that night blessing General Wadsworth, and con- 
gratulating himself that his regiment had been assigned 
to his brigade. 

This example of consideration for the men over whom 
he was placed was by no means exceptional. He was 
the commander not only, but he was also the watchful 
friend of the officers and men in his brigade. There was 
no matter too trivial for his ready personal attention, if 
it concerned the health or comfort of his men. The 
guard-house, the kitchens, the sinks, the stables: all 
were frequently subjected to his inspection and required 
to be kept in the cleanest and best possible condition. 
The writer of this has been aroused by General Wads- 



1801] CAMP INSPECTION 87 

worth at four o'clock of a winter's morning and re- 
quested to accompany him in a tour of the camp to 
see if the men's huts were properly warmed and venti- 
lated, and many a soldier of the Twentieth was surprised 
on being awakened in the short hours of the morning 
at seeing his gray-headed Brigade-Commander and his 
Lieutenant-Colonel inspecting his stove and chimney 
and sniffing the air of his hut, as though they suspected 
he had the choicest stores of the commissary and quar- 
termaster's departments hidden away in the capacious 
recesses of his eight by ten palace. General Wadsworth 
would stand in the snow and mud for hours at a time 
instructing the men how to build rude fireplaces and 
chimneys, and he was especially exacting in regard to 
the stables. He was a lover of good horses, and he 
believed the brute deserved a good dwelling-place, and 
that he should be well fed and kindly treated. 1 

Such a description indicates, as well as anything can, 
not only the responsibilities but also the opportunities of 
a general officer of volunteers at the beginning of the 
war. In view of the fact that there were many volun- 
teer officers who to inexperience added incapacity, one 
is likely to dwell on the superior fitness of the trained 
officers of the regular army and, as is so often done, to 
condemn the Federal and State authorities for putting 
political ahead of military considerations in their appoint- 
ments. This criticism, however, ignores the plain facts 
of the case. The number of men professionally trained 
for war — small at best, and diminished by the with- 
drawal from the regular army of those who entered the 
Confederate service — was hopelessly inadequate to fill 
the positions required in the vast body of troops which 
the North was raising. Volunteer officers were there- 
fore a plain necessity. But this was not the whole 
story. The Northern soldier who enlisted in 1861 and 
1862 was a self-reliant, intelligent citizen and patriot. 
The only power to which he was accustomed to yield 

1 The Ulster Guard and the War of the Rebellion, pp. 153, 154. 



88 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

obedience was the law which he as a voter had had a 
chance in making. In this respect he resembled the 
patriot soldier of the early part of the French Revolu- 
tion, who considered the title citoyen to confer every bit 
as much authority as the titles which his officers held. 
His attitude toward his commanders was one of friendly 
co-operation, and in this attitude he expected them to 
acquiesce. On New Year's day, 1862, the celebration 
devised by one of Wadsworth's regiments consisted in 
the temporary abdication of the officers, their places 
being taken by men elected from the ranks, who made 
their superiors the camp Gibeonites, hewers of wood and 
drawers of water for the day. 1 

Clearly, to win the reluctant footsteps of such "sov- 
ereigns in uniform" along the hard road of instinctive 
and instantaneous obedience — the first duty of a sol- 
dier — the skill of an officer of their own antecedents was 
often of more avail than that of a military precisian. 
Of course, not every officer from civil life possessed this 
skill; but wherever was found a man who had the gift 
of leadership, it usually proved that in camp, on the 
march, and on the field of battle his power of personal 
ascendancy formed the basis of the discipline which his 
men acquired. And if such an officer showed himself 
earnest in purpose and brave in fight there was no feat 
of endurance or courage to which he could not command 
them. 

Such considerations by no means leave out of ac- 
count the fact that there were volunteer officers who 
were not only a weakness but a disgrace to the army, 
but it must be remembered that the chief cause of their 
inferiority was one that was common to a large number 
of the officers of the regular army. Jealousies, bicker- 
ings, insubordination, magnifying of self were human 
failings that distracted the Army of the Potomac for 
the first three years of the war. An officer could rise 

1 Chronicles of the 21st N. Y., p. 140. 



1861] CARE OF HIS MEN 89 

above such failings and sink self in service not by virtue 
of his previous military experience but by virtue of the 
stuff of manliness and patriotism that was in him. This 
fact the American volunteer, with his keen native wit, 
instantly recognized, and on this recognition he based 
his conduct. 

The bearing of all this in Wadsworth's case may 
be summed up in the words of one of his staff. He 
had, says General Kress, 1 "a serious appreciation of his 
lack of education and training in the details of mili- 
tary affairs, a deficiency for which I claim his good 
judgment, energy, sound common sense, the esteem and 
regard of all under his command which he invariably 
acquired, his adaptability, and his quiet, matchless bra- 
very were ample offsets; military details are not so diffi- 
cult to acquire; he would soon have mastered the essen- 
tials. I doubt if any more appropriate appointment to 
the grade had been made at that time." 

Thus it was that Wadsworth from the first won re- 
gard and obedience from the men in his brigade. More- 
over, the practical instinct which led him to have a supply 
of hot coffee ready for the cold and weary Twentieth is 
only one out of a hundred instances of the way in which 
the long habit of out-of-doors life and the traditions of 
pioneering had taught him the right thing to do for the 
comfort of man and beast exposed to the elements. An- 
other case is that of his ordering at his own expense a 
large supply of gloves from Gloversville for the benefit 
of men on picket duty. The long habit of generosity, 
too, is of course accountable for this; but such favors 
carried with them no demoralization. The men took 
them in the spirit in which they were given, not as evi- 
dences of wealth or of a desire to curry favor, but as 
showing a generous solicitude to provide for his soldiers 
that degree of comfort necessary to their efficiency. 

When the men of Wadsworth's brigade prided them- 

1 In a private letter. 



90 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

selves on their good fortune in having as commander 
a man of means, they also did not fail to note that he 
was careful to make no ostentatious display in his own 
way of life. It was not uncommon for the commander 
of a regiment or brigade to show his sense of a recent 
rise in social importance by entertaining guests at his 
head-quarters with champagne. The "camp fare" on 
which Russell dined at Upton's Hill and on the plain- 
ness of which he for once did not comment unfavorably, 
in his usual gourmand's fashion, was but an example 
of Wadsworth's gift for keeping in touch with his men 
by living with them the life of a soldier. 

The current newspaper phrase of these months, "All 
quiet along the Potomac" — a watchword which came 
to have a sharp edge of irony as the season wore on — 
was by no means true of Wadsworth's command and 
the adjoining brigades along the line of the advance. 
The country between the Federal pickets stationed three 
miles in advance of Upton's Hill and the Confederate pick- 
ets at Fairfax Court House abounded in woodlands and 
offered many opportunities for the detachments of Stu- 
art's cavalry which infested it to operate secretly against 
the Federals. The region had, of course, suffered from 
the devastations of both armies, and on many of the 
farms the buildings were either burnt to the ground or 
else abandoned; but where white inhabitants remained 
they were, with few exceptions, of Southern sympathies 
and, in effect, spies upon the movements of the Federals. 
As for the negroes, the instinct of loyalty to their masters 
still persisted in enough cases to render their childlike 
curiosity concerning the Northern troops a matter of 
decidedly ambiguous intention. All these advantages 
the dashing Stuart knew how to put to good use. 

Another circumstance that contributed to make 
Wadsworth anxious about his picket line was the fact 
that as yet the Yankee volunteer approximated the con- 



1861] RECONNOITRING 91 

dition of a soldier only in external aspect. In outpost 
duty the regiments took turns, marching from camp with 
a supply of "cooked rations," and serving for forty- 
eight hours. Although the men when on duty were no 
longer so green that they could be led by the tinkle of 
a cow-bell in search of fresh milk only to walk into a 
Confederate ambush, still the sight of one of the lean 
pigs that ran wild in the woods was often too great a 
temptation to a hungry man; and it was common knowl- 
edge that the picket-firing, strictly forbidden except in 
case of alarm, was likely to be directed at a four-legged 
rather than a two-legged victim. It is no wonder, there- 
fore, that Wadsworth should have had very much on 
his mind the fortunes of whatever regiment was doing 
picket duty, or that he should have ridden nearly every 
day to Falls Church, just inside the Federal fines, to con- 
sult with its commanding officer and also, it must be 
admitted, to do a little reconnoitring on his own ac- 
count. If in this practice he calls to mind Washington 
and Lafayette similarly occupied at Wilmington, it is 
only another point in the resemblance, already suggested, 
between Wadsworth and the fighters of the Revolution- 
ary era. 

A still further incentive to Wadsworth in making 
these reconnoissances was the hope of finding forage at 
some farm between the lines, for with navigation on 
the Potomac blocked by Confederate batteries and the 
single-track railroad between Washington and Baltimore 
taxed far beyond its powers of performance, the prob- 
lem of providing fodder for the horses in the army was 
rapidly becoming critical. 1 The zeal with which he set 
about scouring the country for provender brought him 
on one occasion into closer quarters with the enemy 
than he had bargained for. On the morning of Novem- 

1 According to the report of the chief quartermaster of the Army of the 
Potomac, four hundred tons of forage were required daily. — (W. R., XI, 
pt. 1, p. 157.) 



92 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

ber 8 he had set out on this quest, accompanied by 
two privates, and his search had carried him to a farm 
a mile or more beyond the lines. Here, having dis- 
mounted at noon to eat his lunch, he suddenly spied a 
squad of Confederate cavalry rapidly approaching. He 
himself had time to get to horse and make good his es- 
cape; the two privates, who had accepted an invitation 
to take their meal inside the house, were captured. 1 

Though after this incident Wadsworth restricted 
somewhat the range of his own reconnoitring, the warn- 
ing of the adventure was lost on a foraging expedition 
that set forth a few days later from the other brigade 
stationed at Upton's Hill. A train of six wagons with 
teamsters and men to do the loading and an escort of 
fifty soldiers started on November 16 for Doolan's farm, 
which was some distance beyond the place where Wads- 
worth had had his narrow escape. While filling their 
wagons they kept due watch, but when at noon the 
negroes about the place offered them the unwonted del- 
icacies of hoe-cake and milk the hungry and guileless 
soldiers, taking the bait, gathered about the house, in- 
tent on nothing but their dinners. Meanwhile a mes- 
senger betook himself to the next farm where some 
sixty cavalry of a Mississippi regiment were in hiding. 
Soon the care-free Northerners were disturbed in their 
hour of ease, and, after an interval during which the 
farm premises were the scene of what was more a scram- 
ble than a skirmish, the Mississippians retired from the 
field of action, having in their possession over thirty 
shamefaced New Yorkers and their muskets, five new 
army wagons, twenty valuable horses, and "one hun- 
dred and twenty bushels of excellent corn, ready shucked 
and in the wagons." 2 Such was the happy-go-lucky 
volunteer of 1861. 

The result of these two successes was to embolden 
the Confederates to a deed of greater daring. On No- 

1 108 W. R., p. 379. 2 5 W. R., p. 440. 



1801] ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE WADSWORTH 93 

vember 15 Beauregard sent to Johnston a clipping from 
a Baltimore newspaper detailing the incident in which 
Wadsworth, for the first and only time in his life, showed 
a clean pair of heels to the enemy; 1 three days later, act- 
ing on the hint thus given, Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzhugh 
Lee, with a detachment of the First Virginia Cavalry, 
set out in the direction of the Union line in front of 
Upton's Hill "for the purpose," as the Confederate com- 
mander said in his report, "of obtaining valuable infor- 
mation." His plan was probably to break through the 
pickets with a dash and push toward Falls Church at 
the hour at which Wadsworth was accustomed to make 
his afternoon round. Lee succeeded in getting three or 
four hundred yards within the Union lines; but, unfort- 
unately for him and quite contrary to his expectation, 
the reserve companies of the regiment on picket, 2 which 
happened to be close at hand and in command of an 
officer with a cool head, were marched forward and from 
the shelter of a thicket poured a sharp fire on the Con- 
federates. For a few moments there was hot work, Lee's 
opponents, greatly to his surprise, fighting "with much 
more bravery than the Federal troops usually exhibit." 
Then, since there was no longer hope of catching the 
Yankee brigadier on that day, Lee, taking his wounded 
and his prisoners, retired slowly to camp. 3 

Such brushes as these, though productive of greater 
watchfulness, did not cause Wadsworth to abandon his 
determination to obtain forage wherever it could be 
found outside the lines. In the course of the winter 

1 108 W. R., p. 379. 

2 The 84th New York, commonly known as the 14th Brooklyn. It was 
not at the time in Wadsworth 's brigade, though in 1803 it formed a portion 
of his command. 

3 See the reports of the respective commanders in each of which the ob- 
ject of the raid is hinted at (5 W. R., pp. 441, 442). W. M. Campbell, one 
of the captured, was brought the next day before Generals Johnston, Beau- 
regard, G. W. Smith, and Stuart, and Colonel Fitzhugh Lee, and the in- 
quiries put to him by them disclosed the purpose of the raid. — (Letter of 
W. M. Campbell to J. W. Wadsworth.) 



94 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

four or five expeditions, managed with circumspection 
and sufficient escort, were uniformly successful, and 
Wadsworth reported that on each occasion they brought 
in from fifty to a hundred wagon-loads of forage, whereby 
the needs of McDowell's division were greatly relieved. 
During the whole season the only loss suffered by his 
command at the hands of the enemy was that of the 
two unwary privates who put their faith in the hospital- 
ity of a Virginia farmer. 1 

If this narrative of the unpretentious military ex- 
ploits of a general of volunteers tend to provoke a smile, 
let it be remembered that the point of the story is not 
to make a hero out of a modest country gentleman but 
to show in what fashion a man of aptitude in affairs 
brought over into his new profession of arms the expe- 
rience gained in civil life. In applying to himself the 
standard of duty to which he held up the enlisted men 
under him, Wadsworth showed a sense of dignity different 
at least from that of the general officers whose presence 
in force on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Via Sacra of the 
capital, was a subject of derisive jest. A stone, so one 
story ran, thrown at a dog there glanced from its in- 
tended victim and hit two brigadier-generals. From such 
dangers Wadsworth at Upton's Hill was exempt. 

In still another respect the experience and convic- 
tions of Wadsworth's civil life came into play in this 
new field. It was quite a matter of course for him to 
regard the inhabitants of the region under his command 
much as he had always regarded the tenants on his es- 
tates, and to deem a concern for their welfare as within 
the scope of his duty. How naturally and how actively 
he carried out this conception was described some months 
later by Upton, who reoccupied his house after the Army 
of the Potomac had taken the field. 2 

1 General Wadsworth's report to the War Department of his military 
career. Original in the possession of J. W. Wadsworth. 

2 Letter in the New York Tribune, October 24, 1862. 



1861] CARE OF VIRGINIANS 95 

While in command at this post, where he [Wads- 
worth] had a most difficult and trying task to perform, 
he exhibited so much wisdom, and tempered the firm- 
ness of his command with so much kindness and for- 
bearance, that he won the confidence and respect of the 
citizens of Fairfax, and I have heard some of them, who 
were among the bitterest rebels, express feelings of re- 
spect, and even affection, for him, which no subsequent 
events of this wretched rebellion are likely to efface. 
. . . W T hen the rebels fell back there went with them 
a good many men from my neighborhood who were ig- 
norant and deluded as to the cause of the war, and the 
true character of the "Yankees and Lincolnites," but 
who had never taken up arms; some of these left desti- 
tute families behind them, and there were then — as, 
alas! there will be this coming winter— many cases of 
sickness and destitution among women and children. 
These cases General Wadsworth inquired into and re- 
lieved so far as possible; to give two instances out of 
many which might be related: one man left a wife and 
ten children; the mother was taken sick and the chil- 
dren were starving; General Wadsworth sent flour and 
provisions from his own stores to this family and con- 
trived to get word of invitation beyond our lines to the 
father to return home, which he did in time to soothe 
the last hours of his dying wife and parent; this man has 
been ever since at home and is a good, industrious farmer. 
Another case was that of a man who had been violent in 
denouncing all Yankees (but who speaks now in the 
warmest praise of General Wadsworth), who had fled 
without other cause than a conscious complicity with 
the rebels, and whose wife was near her confinement, 
while his aged mother was on her death-bed. General 
Wadsworth sent for him also in time to assuage the 
distress of his family. . . . Indeed, so thoroughly did he 
enter into the duties of his position, I verily believe he 
is better acquainted at this moment with the personnel 
of Fairfax County than I, who have lived there nearly 
thirty years. . . . 

No less under his care did Wadsworth consider the 
slave population of the region, and his efforts at this 
time in their behalf proved an introduction to more im- 



96 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

portant work that he was to do later. In many cases, 
where the negroes had been abandoned by their masters, 
their condition was peculiarly forlorn, and his sympathy 
was quick to respond to the plight of the poor wretches 
whose state, according to his conviction, was the cause 
of the war, and to do for them what little there was 
that could be done. "My dear Sumner," he wrote on 
December 31: "There are three or four families here of 
slaves — practically emancipated — which I wish to get to 
the North, at least as far as Philadelphia. They are 
mostly women and children. How can I get papers for 
them through Baltimore? Please make inquiries and 
advise me." 

Another instance of Wadsworth's concern for the 
negroes is given in the story told by an officer whom 
he sent out to a house near the picket line, where, he 
had been informed, lay the body of an old man who had 
been the slave of an acquaintance of former days. "The 
house, on reaching it," wrote the officer, "I found oc- 
cupied by a party of the Harris Light Cavalry, com- 
manded by Major Gregory, who, on learning the Gen- 
eral's wish, promptly furnished men for the requisite 
service. An old colored woman, the wife of the de- 
ceased, was the only person of her race present — a meek, 
subdued old soul — who, in answer to my questions about 
her family, said, in broken accents, that her three chil- 
dren, her only ones, had been sold into the Carohnas 
while yet very young, and that she had never seen or 
heard of them since. If these were alive they were her 
only living kin, and she was now alone in the world. We 
gave the old man a decorous Christian burial, and I 
stated what I had seen and heard to General Wadsworth 
on my return. The recital moved him deeply, and he 
expressed himself with indignant energy on the abomina- 
tions of a system which laughs at the rights of parents, 
and by tearing apart families at pleasure and for gain 
violates the most sacred ties and affections." 1 

1 Unidentified newspaper clipping. 



1861] CARE OF NEGROES 97 

Though such an instance is highly characteristic of 
the first contact of one type of Northerner with the sys- 
tem of slavery, there was many another officer in the 
Army of the Potomac whom the application of the touch- 
stone showed to be of quite different quality. If negroes, 
seeking with the instinct of freedom what they deemed 
the refuge of the Union army, came within the lines at a 
point where one of these men held high command, they 
soon discovered their mistake. They were seized as fugi- 
tive slaves, and United States volunteers were used to 
return them to their masters, though when, as often hap- 
pened, the owners also were fugitives, the attempt to do 
so was not attended with success. Negroes who made 
their way to the outposts in front of Upton's Hill re- 
ceived, it is needless to say, treatment of another sort. 
Every such case was, by Wadsworth's orders, brought 
directly to him, and before the interview was ended he 
had provided as best he could for the fugitive's wants, 
giving him work about the camp when possible, or send- 
ing him on to Washington. But first he plied him with 
questions as to what he knew of the number and posi- 
tion of the Confederate forces at Centreville and Manas- 
sas. In the information derived from repeated inquiries 
of this kind Wadsworth put considerable confidence, and 
though this confidence was not shared by many officers 
of higher rank, in the end, when the question of the 
size of the force that had been confronting the Army 
of the Potomac all winter was a matter of general con- 
cern, it was proved that Wadsworth's judgment was not 
mistaken. 

The year 1861 drew to a close and the Army of the 
Potomac had still taken no advantage of the Indian 
summer which delayed so long amid the woodlands of 
Virginia. To Lincoln and the officers coming in con- 
tact with McClellan the reason why was beginning to 
be apparent, for they had already had cognizance of 



98 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

those qualities in the general-in-chief which made him 
so difficult either to command or to obey. "Surrounded 
for the most part by young officers," says the Comte de 
Paris, who was then serving on McClellan's staff 1 and 
who has been one of his most lenient critics, "he was 
himself the most youthful of us all, not only by reason 
of his physical vigor, the vivacity of his impressions, 
the noble candor of his character, and his glowing pa- 
triotism, but also, I may add, by his inexperience of 
men." 2 Difficulties with a valetudinarian such as Gen- 
eral Winfield Scott could perhaps be pardoned to the 
"inexperience of men" of any commander; but Mc- 
Clellan's persistent and contemptuous stand-off attitude 
toward "browsing presidents" showed this inexperience 
to consist in part of the Bourbonism which learns noth- 
ing and forgets nothing. 

The tactlessness of a man who could thus deal with 
his superiors naturally displayed itself also in his hand- 
ling of his division commanders, among whom the posi- 
tive and able McDowell was soon in disfavor. Of these 
facts the Northern public was naturally ignorant; had 
it possessed them its murmurs would have been louder 
and more menacing than they were. Congress, how- 
ever, assembling early in December, was quick both to 
sense the situation and to act, appointing a committee 
on the conduct of the war with powers for gaining in- 
formation at first hand. "Endeavoring," in the words of 
its chairman, Senator Wade, "to see if there is any way 
in God's world to get rid of the capital besieged, while 
Europe is looking down upon us as almost a conquered 
people," 3 it summoned to its sessions as witnesses one 
general after another from the Army of the Potomac. 
Wadsworth, as it chanced, was the fifth person to appear 
before it, giving his testimony on December 26, 1861. 

1 His younger brother, the Due de Chartres, held a similar position. 

2 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, II, 112. 

3 C. W., pt. 1, p. 140. 











BvJAVir flfl vA 1 
BB.^Br flBr 

wMm ' Bi 






T. R. II. THE COMTE DE PARIS AND THE 
DIC DE CHARTRES. 

The Orleans Princes who Served on General 
McClellan's Staff. 





1861] STRENGTH OF THE ENEMY 99 

From McDowell, who preceded Wadsworth as a wit- 
ness, the committee had obtained his views touching 
the importance of an advance toward the enemy at 
Manassas and Centreville. To Wadsworth they now put 
questions on the subjects as to which they were most 
concerned: whether McClellan had called his division 
commanders to council; whether the condition of the 
roads was favorable to a forward movement; whether 
the divisions of the army should not be organized into 
army corps; whether the cavalry was not in excessive 
proportion; whether he, Wadsworth, returned fugitive 
slaves to their owners. In fact, he was asked to answer 
any sort of military question that might suggest itself 
to the inconsequent and non-military mind of a con- 
gressman sitting in committee. Such of these queries 
as related to matters of fact he answered with frank- 
ness; to such as dealt with matters of opinion he re- 
plied with discretion. His testimony on two important 
points is here given. As to his ways of getting informa- 
tion concerning the strength of the enemy, he said: 

The sources of supply that were open to us, until 
within a very few days, were these: runaway negroes 
coming in our lines, deserters coming in, and prisoners 
taken from the enemy; likewise the information col- 
lected by scouts, who go out, but do not go exactly 
within the lines of the enemy — or not very much within 
their lines — very slightly. ... I have scouts who go 
out, for instance, to Fairfax Court House; there are a 
number of Union men near Fairfax Court House with 
whom these scouts communicate, and also some intelli- 
gent negroes. From these various sources a great deal 
of information is obtained. It is reliable as far as it 
goes, but it is not definite enough. The way in which 
we get at the numbers of the enemy from such sources 
is by endeavoring to ascertain the number of their 
camps, the number of their regiments, and then we mul- 
tiply that by what we suppose to be the average force 
of their regiments. We have several times had parties 
come in who would tell us how many camps there were, 



100 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

for instance, at Fairfax Court House; how many at Cen- 
treville; and, not so definitely, but approximately, the 
number at Manassas. In that way we have had some 
materials for getting an estimate of their strength. But 
latterly an order has been issued prohibiting the com- 
manders in front from examining these parties as they 
came in. We are now obliged to send them to head- 
quarters. That order took effect two or three weeks 
ago, and we now send them in without examination to 
any great extent. I know that General McDowell told 
me it would not be a breach of the order to examine 
them sufficiently for us to know whether the enemy were 
going to attack us at once. Then there have been re- 
strictions placed upon the movements of these scouts. 
There is difficulty in getting passes through the lines; 
so that within two or three weeks we have not had so 
much information as previously. I do not know the 
object of it. . . . 



As to the effect on the men of inaction, he said: 

The troops are still in very good spirits. They have 
not abandoned the idea of active service this winter; 
but I think if it should become generally understood 
in the army that we are not to have any active service 
this winter, it would be almost impossible to keep the 
volunteers here. The volunteers, as I know to be 
the case with those from New York, embrace a great 
many men of intelligence and property. Many have 
left their families under circumstances of a great deal 
of anxiety and have come here from patriotic motives. 
If it was understood that they were going into winter 
quarters, it would be almost impossible to keep them 
here at all. The applications for furloughs are now ten 
times what they were in the summer. The men want 
to go home and see their families, as they are doing 
nothing here. Our time is largely occupied by these 
applications, which are very pressing. 

Question. I will ask you whether, in your judgment, 
your men would be improved by the experience they 
would obtain by remaining in camp during all winter? 

Wadsworth. I do not think they would. The winter 



isfli] CONDITION OF THE ENEMY 101 

is very unfavorable for drilling. ... I do not think the 
men would be better in the spring under any circum- 
stances, even if they were in good spirits. The officers 
of the line might be improved if they had efficient work- 
ing commanders who would compel them to study, and 
who would drill them themselves at officers' drill. . . . 

Question. Is it your opinion that a movement should 
be made? 

Wadsworih. It seems almost presumptuous for me to 
give an opinion upon that question. But as you ask 
me, I will answer you. It seems to me that there is 
no doubt about it: that we must, beyond all question, 
make a movement. I think we are largely superior to 
our enemies in numbers, and we have a vast superiority 
in artillery. . . . They are brave men, and ardent in 
their cause; they fight very well when we meet them. 
. . . From what I have seen of them, however, I am 
sure we are superior to them in discipline. 

Question. How are they off for clothing, so far as you 
have been able to learn from their prisoners? 

Wadsworih. Very badly off. We get very reliable ac- 
counts in that respect from negroes and from citizens 
who have seen them. There are citizens near Fairfax 
Court House who see their troops there, but are not al- 
lowed to go to Centreville or Manassas. The enemy 
takes very extraordinary precautions to prevent us from 
learning their numbers. And if any citizen goes to Cen- 
treville or Manassas he is kept there, and not allowed 
to return. But these citizens see detachments of their 
troops. A man by the name of Webster, living a little 
way out of Fairfax Court House, saw some regiments 
pass his house, and he gives a very reliable account of 
their condition as to clothing. 1 

The period when the committee of Congress was en- 
tering upon its labors, patriotic but nevertheless subver- 
sive of military propriety and discipline, marked also 
the beginning of one of the most poignantly distressing 
situations of the war in its exhibition of men at cross- 
purposes, of incompatibility of temperaments. A day or 
two before Christmas McClellan fell ill. Refusing to 
1 C. W., pt. 1, pp. 147-149. 



102 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

relinquish his command temporarily, he kept everything 
at a stand-still at precisely the moment when further in- 
action had become insupportable. Lincoln, expressing 
the wish to "borrow" the army for a while, called Mc- 
Dowell and Franklin, another of McClellan's division 
commanders, into council with some of the members of 
the cabinet, and the body thus casually constituted un- 
dertook first to inform itself as to the internal condi- 
tion of the army and then to plan a campaign which 
should satisfy the impatience of the North for action. 
Nothing shows better the desperateness of the situation 
than the fact that men of sense should undertake to co- 
operate in this fatuous fashion. Though the conference 
seems to have wonderfully accelerated McClellan's re- 
covery, the deadlock continued. Unfortunately for him, 
his inaction, combined with the ungracious treatment of 
his generals already referred to, had spread demoraliza- 
tion among them. The testimony of the officers, except 
Fitz-John Porter, called before the Committee on the 
Conduct of the War, goes far to prove this; if further 
evidence were needed it could be found in a letter writ- 
ten by Wadsworth to Sumner on January 10, the day of 
Lincoln's first conference with McDowell and Franklin. 

Upton's Hill, January 10, 1862. 

My Dear Sumner: — 

I have just received your note. There are no signs 
of a fight or a move. The Adjutant-General of General 
McClellan told one of my staff that the country ought 
to be satisfied that the Capital had been protected, 
and that he did not think an onward move could be 
made. 

In my judgment the policy of sending expeditions to 
attack the enemy at unguarded points while he comes 
up and offers us battle in sight of our Capital which 
we decline is a pusillanimous, cowardly one. The army 
is as much depressed and discouraged as the monied 
interest. The despondency and disgust is almost uni- 
versal. Starting with a prosperous and patriotic North 



1862] DISCONTENT IN THE ARMY 103 

we have reached bankruptcy and got seven miles into 
Virginia. 1 I tell you confidentially but advisedly that 
the army has lost confidence in its commander. It 
never had any, nor had anyone else, in the Secretary of 
War. Our only hope now is in the Legislative branch. 
If you are competent to the crisis you may save the 
country; but you must do it soon or be too late. 

It is difficult for me to leave my command and come 
to Washington, though I have been in for a few hours 
at a time occasionally. I wish you would make up a 
party and come out and dine with me. Send me word 
if' you can by the Military Telegraph from [the] War 
Office and I will be at home. I should be very much 
gratified if I could have an hour's conversation with a 
few influential gentlemen in the Senate. I should like 
to meet Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Grimes. Can you man- 
age this for me? You see that I write you with great 
frankness. My apology will be found in the desperate 
condition of our affairs. I do not aspire to discuss the 
great problems before you, but to let you know the 
condition and feeling of the army. 

Very sincerely yours, 

JAS. S. WADSWORTH. 

It was from the executive, nevertheless, that the 
first ray of hope came. Remove McClellan Lincoln 
could not, for there was no one commanding the confi- 
dence of the country who could be put in his place; but 
on the very day after Wadsworth's letter was written 
Cameron was displaced, and on January 13 Edwin M. 
Stanton was appointed to succeed him. This was almost 
the first act of Lincoln's to reveal the quality of leader- 
ship which the stern discipline of the national crisis was 
slowly developing within him. Conscious of the train 
of blunders into which his administrative inexperience 

1 The financial measures adopted by Congress in the summer of 1861 
had proved inadequate, and the United States Treasury was nearly empty. 
" Saturday night, December 28, 1861, the managers of the New York banks, 
after a meeting of six hours, decided that they must suspend specie pay- 
ments. Gold soon brought a slight premium." — (Rhodes, History of the 
U. S., m, 561.) 



104 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

and insecurity had led him, he had now, at the long last, 
turned into the upward path. His genius consisted not 
a little in his power to grow from weakness to strength, 
and with this deed of courage he fitly began the great 
year of Emancipation. 

The appointment of Stanton, however, had little effect 
upon the immediate fortunes of the Army of the Potomac 
except to strengthen in the cabinet the hostility to Mc- 
Clellan. Meanwhile the unseemly tussle between the 
President and the commander of the armies went on. 
The long arguments between them as to the best route 
for the advance of the Army of the Potomac — whether 
it should be directly against the Confederate army at 
Manassas, or, by a change of base, against Richmond up 
one of the rivers flowing into Chesapeake Bay — have no 
place here. With a point at issue, however, which later 
became acute, Wadsworth had a direct concern. It was 
one of McClellan's failings as a commander that his 
sense of fact was always at the mercy of his imagina- 
tion. His faculty for "realizing hallucinations," x to use 
the phrase of Gurowski, the Thersites of Washington at 
this time, displayed itself nowhere more tryingly than in 
his estimate of the number of the enemy opposed to 
him in Virginia. He was convinced that his own army 
of over one hundred and fifty thousand was face to face 
with eighty thousand men at Manassas and Centreville, 
while the Confederate forces along the Potomac above 
and below Washington amounted to thirty-five thousand 
more. 2 His belief, based on the reports of Allen Pinker- 
ton, the chief of his secret service, was proof against any 
evidence which made his foes less formidable in point 
of numbers. Wadsworth, on the other hand, relying on 
the means of information which he had indicated to the 
Committee on the Conduct of the War, had reached the 
conviction that the force about Manassas was between 

1 Gurowski's Diary from March, 1861, to Nov. 1863, p. 99. 

2 5 W. R., p. 53. 



1862] SECRETARY STANTON 105 

forty thousand and fifty thousand men. 1 Growing surer 
of his figures as the weeks of the winter wore on, he 
took his evidence to McDowell, to McClellan, and even 
to Stanton. Though McClellan rejected it with a rude- 
ness, so the story goes, surpassing his usual treatment 
of subordinates, on the Secretary of War the effect was 
of a different sort. The soldier before him, so clear as 
to his facts and pressing them home with all the personal 
force of a man accustomed to make his ideas tell upon his 
auditors, struck Stanton as a man who might be of ser- 
vice for other work in the combinations to be made in 
the near future. 

These new combinations, representing the effort of 
the administration to put vigor into the conduct of the 
war, were the outcome of the appointment of Stanton, 
who, having now been in office for nearly two months 
and feeling himself firmly established, was beginning to 
manifest that relentless and unreasoning love of author- 
ity for which he was to become famous. A man of 
far greater executive force than Lincoln, a "worker of 
workers," in the phrase of Nicolay and Hay, 2 and also 
of far less personal tact and human understanding, he 
was soon at loggerheads with McClellan. Being both 
inexperienced and contemptuous as to military habits of 
thought and methods of procedure and having withal 
a consuming passion for action, he had come into the 
cabinet at just the moment when Lincoln was dallying 
with the idea of "borrowing" the Army of the Potomac. 
Impatient of all half-way measures, Stanton fell in read- 
ily with the President's scheme, which was in effect to 
ignore McClellan and to issue orders direct to the army 

1 Greeley's American Conflict, II, 212. Lossing, II, 355, 358, says that 
the estimate of General Wool at Fortress Monroe confirmed that of Wads- 
worth. It has been too often assumed that all the estimates given Mc- 
Clellan of the numbers of the Confederates were exaggerated. The truth 
is, he wilfully shut his eyes to the evidence that, if accepted, would condemn 
his inaction. 

2 Life of Lincoln, V, 136. 



106 WADS WORTH OF GENESEO 

himself. In defence of such a course, as green and art- 
less as it was demoralizing and predestined to disaster, 
the only thing that can be urged is that no other was 
open. As has already been said, there was no available 
commander of sufficient achievement in whose favor Mc- 
Clellan could be relieved, and, this being the case, the 
way to make the best of a bad business seemed to be for 
the administration to assume such control as should pre- 
vent McClellan from having altogether his own wilful 
way. A forlorn hope, this, as the events of the past 
winter had already shown; but there was no hope else- 
where. 

It was on Saturday, March 8, 1862, soon after Mc- 
Clellan had returned from the inglorious "lockjaw expe- 
dition" at Harper's Ferry, 1 that effective steps toward 
this singular arrangement were taken. While McClellan 
was taking counsel of his general officers, mostly divi- 
sion commanders, called together at Lincoln's direction 
to discuss the still unsettled question of the route to 
be taken against the enemy, Lincoln was preparing the 
President's General War Orders, numbered two and 
three, and bearing this same date. 2 By these orders 
McClellan was required to organize the part of the 
Army of the Potomac about to enter upon active opera- 
tions into four corps, for the command of which the rank- 
ing division commanders, Major-General McDowell and 
Brigadier-Generals Sumner, Heintzelman, and Keyes, 
were designated. A fifth corps under Major-General N. P. 
Banks was to be formed of two divisions stationed near 
Harper's Ferry. At Washington was to be left a force 
sufficient in the estimation of McClellan and his corps 

1 McClellan had assembled a large number of boats in the canal oppo- 
site Harper's Ferry, to be used in making a bridge across the river, and had 
ordered a large force to rendezvous there. When, however, it was attempted 
to pass the boats through the lift lock it was found that they were some six 
inches too wide. Chase's mot, that the expedition died of lockjaw, spread 
rapidly in Washington. 

2 5 W. R., pp. 18, 50. 



1862] McCLELLAN'S COMMAND 107 

commanders for its defence, and to the command of this 
force Wadsworth was assigned with the title of Military 
Governor of the District of Washington. The work 
thus begun without consultation with McClellan was 
continued — but by no means completed — by the Presi- 
dent's War Order, No. 3, published three days later. 1 
By its terms McClellan was relieved of his position of 
general-in-chief, his command being restricted to the 
Department of the Potomac; the troops in the West were 
constituted the Department of the Mississippi, under 
General Halleck; while the mountainous region of west- 
ern Virginia, where there were almost no forces, Union 
or Confederate, was designated the Mountain Depart- 
ment, with Major-General John C. Fremont, recently 
returned in disgrace from Missouri, as its commander. 
All three commanders of departments were ordered to 
report directly to the Secretary of War. 

This stripping of authority from McClellan, the pre- 
lude to a still more humiliating stripping of troops, he 
bore with fairly good grace, issuing without undue delay 
the necessary commands for the organization of his army 
into corps. Against the appointment of Wadsworth, how- 
ever, he saw fit to protest. It was not strange that he 
should object to an arrangement by which a man wholly 
without technical training was to be put in command of 
the extensive fortifications about the city and of the 
troops necessary to man them. He must also have had 
some inkling of Wadsworth's personal hostility to him. 
But, on remonstrating with Stanton, he was told, as he 
declares, "that Wadsworth had been selected because it 
was necessary, for political reasons, to conciliate the agri- 
cultural interests of New York, and that it was useless 
to discuss the matter, because it would in no event be 
changed." 2 Whatever the rashness of Lincoln and Stan- 
ton in assigning Wadsworth to such a position, McClel- 
lan, as in the case of the corps commanders, had only his 

1 5 W. R., p. 54. 2 McClellan's Own Story, p. 226. 



108 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

own dilatoriness to thank. His proposal that the place 
should be given to Brigadier-General W. B. Franklin, an 
excellent officer of the regular army, came too late and 
had the air of being merely an afterthought, a peg upon 
which he could hang his protest. 

With regard to such appointments as those of Banks, 
Fremont, and Wadsworth, it must be remembered that, 
from one point of view, they represented for the month 
of March the balance of favors which Lincoln was con- 
tinually trying to strike between the two wings of the 
Republican party. Throughout the winter the inactiv- 
ity of the Army of the Potomac had been laid by the radi- 
cal leaders to the conservative tendencies of McClellan 
and some of his generals. It was the men of anti-slavery 
sentiments who were spoiling for a fight, and their clamors 
kept the harassed President constantly between the devil 
and the deep sea. The coming of Stanton was a godsend 
to the party of action, and his falling out with McClellan 
a circumstance of which they made the most. The three 
military appointments in question were also read through- 
out the North as signs that the administration had set 
its steps resolutely forward, and the response desired by 
Lincoln came in renewed support from this section of 
the party. 

It was considerations such as these, rather than the 
need of conciliating the agricultural interests in New 
York, that probably played a part in the choice of Wads- 
worth for the position of military governor of the capi- 
tal. His inexperience as commander of an army of 
twenty -five thousand men within fortifications cannot be 
gainsaid; but Stanton, who was already expecting to 
bring to Washington Major-General E. A. Hitchcock, an 
army officer of long service and high standing, was 
doubtless trusting to him to make good Wadsworth's 
professional deficiencies. 1 In point of fact, the turn of 
circumstances, as will presently appear, ultimately relieved 

1 Fifty Years in Camp and Field, p. 437. 



1802] MILITARY GOVERNORSHIP 109 

the volunteer officer of this larger responsibility. The 
true justification for his appointment, therefore, over 
and above his qualifications of general capacity and 
executive force, is to be found in the fact that the 
position was quasi-civil. The man who was to govern 
a place that was half city, half camp must use his mili- 
tary authority in such fashion that it should not con- 
found the strength of the civil arm. In this respect the 
appointment of Wadsworth was as suitable in promise 
as it actually resulted in performance. The single in- 
stance in which, acting with Stanton's consent, he made 
his power paramount is the exception that proves the 
rule. 

Saturday, March 8, the day on which Lincoln's two 
orders were issued, was the beginning of a week of mem- 
orable events, tumbling after one another in disordered 
sequence, kaleidoscopic in their bewildering combina- 
tions. To touch for a moment on things naval, it was 
the day when the iron-clad Merrimac dealt destruction 
among the wooden frigates at Hampton Roads. On the 
next day the iron-clad was checkmated by the Monitor 
in a combat which revolutionized warfare on sea for the 
whole world. On land, on this same Sunday, it became 
known that the Confederate pickets were being with- 
drawn from the lines which they had watched for five 
months. Wadsworth's outposts were among the first to 
make the discovery, and he telegraphed the fact to Mc- 
Clellan's head-quarters. Later in the evening his bri- 
gade received marching orders. Although the day before 
he had had word of Stanton's intention to appoint him 
military governor of Washington, the order assigning 
him to that duty had fortunately not been made out, 
and he was free to lead his men in the advance move- 
ment for which he had so long waited. An hour after 
midnight the sergeants went from tent to tent quietly 
arousing the men and bidding them prepare to start at 
five. "At four," according to the regimental narrative 
of the Twenty -first New York, "all were astir, bonfires 



110 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

were lighted in the streets with the straw of our bunks 
and the remnant of firewood, and in their glare men 
hurried to and fro, securing the safety of whatever must 
be left behind, filling haversacks and canteens, and tak- 
ing a last look at the old camp which had been the scene 
of so many long-to-be-remembered experiences. 

"At five the bugle sounded, and the cry of 'Fall in!' 
echoed from street to street; the men hurried into their 
places, the fine was formed, and just as daylight began 
to streak the east we joyously took up the march. The 
morning was damp, and the hill was enveloped in an 
ashy canopy of smoke through which the smouldering 
fires showed dimly as we turned away, wondering if we 
should ever see it again. On the march at last." ' 

That night Wadsworth's men, being the advance bri- 
gade of the army, encamped in a pine grove about two 
miles east of Centreville. There they tarried for five 
days, the men spending the time free from drill and 
camp duties in straying about the deserted Confeder- 
ate camps and over the battle-field of Bull Run. There, 
too, Stanton's order of appointment reached Wadsworth, 
who made immediate preparation to return to Washing- 
ton. The news of their loss spread rapidly among the 
regiments of the brigade, just returning from drill, and 
with the instinct of soldiers for an emotional moment 
they gathered about their commander to bid him fare- 
well. The thronging adieus, inarticulate save for the 
repeated cries of "Good-by!" were gathered up for ex- 
pression in the "Auld Lang Syne" which the band of 
the Twenty-first New York struck up as he left the 
camp. 2 His connection with the Army of the Potomac, 
beginning with its organization by McDowell, had lasted 
for nine months; another nine months was to pass be- 
fore he saw service with it again. 3 

1 Chronicles of the 21st N. Y., pp. 146, 147. 'Ibid., p. 150. 

3 A few weeks after this leave-taking Wadsworth had occasion to visit 
his old brigade. "He was discovered and recognized by some of the men 
when half a mile away, and the cry was immediately raised, 'Waddy's 
coming!' 'Old Waddy's coming!' It ran rapidly along the line. Then a 



1862] TO WASHINGTON 111 

Riding toward Washington over the same road that 
he had travelled alone after Bull Run, Wadsworth had 
opportunity to reflect upon the transition from the first 
to the second period of his military career. Keenly as 
he desired to lead his brigade in the coming campaign 
and there to justify his pride in its discipline, he was 
not insensible to the recognition by the administration of 
a greater power of service for him in another field. The 
very scope of opportunity in this command, the limits 
of which were still indeterminate in the minds of those 
who had created it, was an attraction to him. With no 
illusions as to his lack of military training for the com- 
mand of a fortified city, and yet in true American fash- 
ion in no wise daunted thereby, he crossed the Potomac 
and entered the nation's capital, the governance of which 
was henceforth to be his care. 

grand rush was made. Men jumped from their tents capless and coatless. 
Those who had caps swung them, and all shouted, 'Hurrah for General 
Wadsworth!' As he came galloping into camp accompanied by his staff, 
the brigade instantly surrounded him in so dense a mass as to hem him in 
entirely. He shook hands with all whom he could reach, asking after the 
health and fare of the men, then forced his way out of this press. . . . He 
did not expect such a greeting, and indeed such a greeting is vouchsafed 
to but few men in the army." — (Camp Fires of the 23rd Reg., N. Y. V., by 
Pound Sterling, p. 45.) 



CHAPTER V 

MILITARY GOVERNOR OF WASHINGTON: NEW 
YORK GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN 

The culminating event of this March week of wonders 
was the return of McClellan and his army from Ma- 
nassas to Alexandria. Instead of pressing after the re- 
treating enemy he purposed, it seemed, to embark his 
vast force on transports and to make the first stage of 
his movement upon Richmond by water. The aston- 
ishment of the North at these developments, as well as 
the disgust of those who from first-hand knowledge saw 
in them the climax of the controversies of the past two 
months, finds vent in a letter written at the end of the 
week by Wadsworth's oldest daughter to her aunt in 
Europe. 

New York, March 15, 1862. 
. . . We have just returned from a short visit to 
Philadelphia and Washington. Mother, Lizzie, and my- 
self arrived one fine evening in Washington where we 
met Father, whom I had not seen for eight months. The 
next morning he took us off to his headquarters at Up- 
ton's Hill, seven miles over the most atrocious roads 
that you ever imagined. We stayed there for three or 
four days, living in a very primitive manner. Lizzie 
and I had a room together, a desolate-looking attic 
room, . . . two camp cots and a tin basin were the 
sole pieces of furniture. One of the aides tacked up a 
couple of old blankets over the windows, and stuffed a 
big hole in the ceiling supposed to have been made 
by a Secessionist cannon-ball. On Saturday we re- 
turned to Washington, and on Sunday came the news 
that the rebels were evacuating Manassas. An immedi- 
ate advance was ordered, and although Father had al- 
ready — on Saturday — been offered the position I have 



COHNEI.IA WADSWORTM KITCIIIE. 




NANCY WHARTON WADSWORTH. ELIZABETH WADSWORTH. 



DAUGHTERS OF JAMES S. WADSWORTH. 

From photographs taken during the Civil War. 



18C2] TO MANASSAS 113 

spoken of [that of military governor of Washington], he 
would not be left behind, and started on Monday morn- 
ing for Centreville and Manassas. Monday was a most 
exciting day in Washington. Troops were moving in 
every direction, followed by long trains of army wagons. 
From Willard's hotel I saw pass forty-eight batteries of 
artillery, and McClellan and his staff — a brigade of itself. 
All were in the greatest spirits, with colors flying and 
bands playing; the streets were thronged with people 
cheering them as they passed. A great battle, a great 
victory, we all surely expected, and how did it all end? 
These magnificent columns, which have been waiting 
so impatiently all winter, this splendid corps d'armee 
marched to Manassas to find the enemy had quietly 
given them the slip, to find only empty fortifications 
with stove-pipes representing cannon, and so they were 
ordered back to Washington. This is probably what 
McClellan has been thinking about the last eight months. 
You probably see nothing but praise of McClellan in 
the newspapers you get abroad. He is extremely un- 
popular here for his arrogance to his divisional generals 
— many of them older than himself — his partiality for 
slavery. . . . The President and Cabinet all dislike him. 
For one thing we certainly have to thank him — by his 
inactivity he has gained for us the contempt of Europe. 
Do you wonder that we are ridiculed and laughed at 
when an army of forty or fifty thousand poorly equipped 
men have kept in check all winter our two hundred thou- 
sand on the banks of the Potomac? 

Never, indeed, did commander set forth for the field 
under unhappier auspices than McClellan, when, on 
Monday, March 17, he began to embark his army at 
Alexandria. The state of mind of Stanton on that day, 
as reported by General Hitchcock in his diaiy, shows 
how the "lockjaw expedition" and the march to Ma- 
nassas and back again had driven the Secretary of War 
to his wits' ends. 

First of all, this morning, in an interview with the 
secretary of war, I declined his offers of a high station 
(two or three of them), and finally asked him if he would 



114 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

allow me to be placed under his own orders as a staff 
officer, to render such service as I might be capable 
of. . . . 

He then asked me to take a seat in his private 
council-room, where I remained most of the day. Towards 
evening he came in, and, shutting the door behind him, 
stated to me the most astounding facts, all going to 
show the astonishing incompetency of General McClel- 
lan. I cannot recite them; but the secretary stated 
fact after fact, until I felt positively sick — that falling 
of the heart which excludes hope. 

I do not wonder, now, that the secretary offered even 
me the command of this Army of the Potomac. . . . 

The secretary is immensely distressed, and with rea- 
son: he is dreadfully apprehensive of a great disaster, 
which, also, is not improbable. 1 

This atmosphere of jealous suspicion of McClellan, 
nowhere more tainted than in Washington, Wadsworth 
was to breathe during the months of the coming spring 
and summer. On his own part he had good reason for 
distrust, as he soon found out when he endeavored to 
ascertain precisely what troops were to be left behind 
to constitute his command. 

McClellan's first thought at this time was naturally 
for the perfecting of the army with which he was to 
take the field. This care led him to make one deduction 
after another from the force originally designated for 
the defence of the capital. For expected siege opera- 
tions he withdrew from the forts the regiments trained 
as heavy artillery; he organized additional divisions for 
one of his corps; for the artillery thus required he took 
horses from the batteries that were to be left behind. 2 
To make up for this reduction he relied upon regiments 
that for one cause or another were not in condition to 
accompany the Army of the Potomac and upon raw 

1 Fifty Years in Camp and Field, p. 440. 

2 Gen. Barry's testimony at the McDowell court of inquiry. — (W. R., 
XII, pt. 1, p. 240.) 



1862] McCLELLAN'S ARRANGEMENTS 115 

troops that had just reached the capital or were about 
to arrive there. 

McClellan's justification of this course lay in his 
conviction that the vigorous movement of his own army 
against Richmond was the best way of occupying the 
forces of the enemy and so protecting Washington. 
Whatever the merit of this view, its weakness was that 
it treated too lightly the stipulation laid down by Lin- 
coln, on recommendation of the four corps commanders, 
that the safety of Washington should be assured by the 
presence of a sufficient body of troops. 1 This fault Mc- 
Clellan, in view of the strained relations existing between 
him and the President and the Secretary of War, should 
have been sedulous to avoid. Still another error in the 
hasty arrangements which he made in these crowded days 
of work at Alexandria was that they did not take into 
account the peculiar opportunity which the Shenandoah 
Valley offered to a body of troops desiring thence to 
threaten Washington. Even less did they take into ac- 
count the presence there of Stonewall Jackson, though, 
as Henderson remarks of McClellan's lack of precautions 
in this respect, "It would have been nothing short of 
miraculous had he even suspected that 4,500 men, under 
a professor of the higher mathematics, might bring to 
naught the operations of his gigantic host." 2 The battle 
of Kernstown, however, on March 23, when Jackson, 
though defeated, made himself felt, resulted in McClellan's 
remedying this neglect by sending back to the Shenandoah 
a considerable portion of Banks's command; but in so do- 
ing he deprived Washington of the force designed to pro- 
tect it at Manassas and Warrenton and did nothing ade- 
quate to make good the deficiency. The final indication 

1 At a council of war held on March 13 these generals, while approving 
McClellan's plan for an advance on Richmond from Fortress Monroe, had 
recommended that, in addition to the garrison for the forts, at least twenty- 
five thousand troops should be left for the defence of Washington. — 
{5 W. R., p. 56.) 

2 Stonewall Jackson, I, 235. 



116 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

of his failure, from whatever motive, to discharge his 
full responsibility in this matter upon which Lincoln and 
Stanton properly laid such stress is the fact that in his 
schedule of the forces left to defend Washington he not 
only included 3,500 men said to be "now ready in Penn- 
sylvania," but also did not perceive that the body of 
7,780 men which was to form part of this covering army 
was also included in his estimate of 23,000 men for Banks's 
army. 1 "It is too plain for argument," says Ropes, sum- 
ming up his careful discussion of the matter, "that Gen- 
eral McClellan did not give to the subject of the defence 
of Washington that strict and conscientious attention 
which its importance demanded, and which a man of the 
highest character would have given to it, — all the more 
because the matter was one which did not directly affect 
his own contemplated operations in the field. Moreover, 
the whole story shows how short-sighted was McClellan's 
course." 2 

McClellan was not a man with the gift of concealing 
his feelings, and when on April 1 Lincoln went down to 
Alexandria to bid him farewell his indifference to the 
safety of Washington was so apparent as to cause the 
President considerable uneasiness. He was in no posi- 
tion, however, to extract from McClellan a definite state- 
ment on this head, for one of the objects of his visit 
was to make clear to the commander the necessity of 
taking from the Army of the Potomac Blenker's divis- 
ion, in order that Fremont in the Mountain Department 
might have a force of sufficient importance. Politics 
and "pressure," as Lincoln himself regretfully admitted, 
were responsible for his proposal — though the anxiety 
aroused by Jackson's giving battle at Kernstown was 
also a consideration of weight — and must be paramount, 
in spite of the opposition of McClellan and Hitchcock. 3 

1 Ropes's Story of the Civil War, I, 262-264. 2 Ropes, I, 265. 

3 As to Stanton's position, compare the following: "When I heard of 
the design to remove that division from the front of Washington I expressed 



1862] McCLELLAN'S ARRANGEMENTS 117 

Instead, therefore, of being able to ask with authority 
for sufficient troops to make the city safe, Lincoln was 
obliged to give McClellan "positive and emphatic assur- 
ance" that after Blenker's division no more men should 
be withdrawn from him. 1 The mood in which the two 
men parted was not a happy augury for the future. 
McClellan turned to write the final letters of instruction 
to Banks and Wadsworth as to the size and disposal of 
their commands, requiring of the latter at this last mo- 
ment some regiments for the Army of the Potomac which 
would in part make up for the loss of Blenker. He also 
prepared for the War Department a statement, impres- 
sive but misleading, showing that in Virginia, the Shenan- 
doah Valley, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Penn- 
sylvania, and New York there was a force of seventy- 
three thousand available for the defence of the capital. 
Lincoln on his part took back to Washington a troubled 
mind which McDowell, who happened to be on the boat 
with him, could do little to relieve. 2 

During all this time, that is, for the first fortnight of 
his service in his new position, Wadsworth had found it 
impossible to ascertain what troops were then and what 
troops were ultimately to be under his authority. For 
lack of a better means of obtaining the necessary infor- 
mation, he inserted a notice in the Washington news- 
papers requiring officers whose commands constituted a 
part of the defending force to report to him; but the 
results were by no means satisfactory. Part of the evi- 

my opinion to the secretary of war that it ought not to be done. He ac- 
quiesced at once in that view, and desired me to go with him to the Presi- 
dent and explain it to the President, which I did, but without success." — 
(General Hitchcock's testimony before the McDowell court of inquiry, 
W. R., XII, pt. 1, p. 220.) 

"I am vigorously urging the President to send you seventeen thousand 
troops, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and pontoon train. He will decide to- 
day."— (Stanton to Fremont, March 31, W. R., XII, pt. 3, p. 34.) Truly an 
extraordinary man, as baffling to the historian and the biographer as he 
was to his contemporaries! 

1 MeClellan's report, 5 W. R., p- 59. 

2 McDowell's testimony, C. W., pt. 1, p. 261. 



118 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

dence that came to him from day to day seemed to 
show that his command was to be made up exclusively 
of troops that were raw, disorganized, or imperfectly 
equipped. 

In this state of affairs, with Lincoln, Stanton, and 
Wadsworth jealously v watchful of the departing com- 
mander, it was the final letter of McClellan's, already 
referred to, that confirmed their suspicions, and it was 
Wadsworth's action thereupon that set in operation the 
train of events which McClellan's partisans later af- 
firmed prevented him from capturing Richmond. On 
the morning of April 2, the day after McClellan's depart- 
ure, General Wadsworth appeared at the War Depart- 
ment with McClellan's letter of the day before ordering 
him to detach four good regiments to the Army of the 
Potomac and to send four thousand men to Manassas. 
In his whole command, Wadsworth said, he had not that 
number of men in fit condition to take the field, and to 
that effect he had telegraphed the general commanding 
at Manassas. 1 From Wadsworth's indignant narrative 
Stanton received the full revelation of McClellan's con- 
temptuous ignorance and indifference in regard to provi- 
sion for the safety of Washington. The facts as Wads- 
worth wrote them down for Stanton are here given: 

Headquaeters Military District of Washington, 
Washington, D. C, April 2, 1862. 

Sir: — I have the honor to submit the following con- 
densed statement of the forces left under my command 
for the defences of Washington: 

Infantry 15,335 

Artillery 4,294 

Cavalry (six companies only mounted) .... 848 

20,477 
Deduct sick, and in arrest and confinement . . . 1,455 

Total present for duty 19,022 

1 W. R., XI, pt. 3, p. 57. 



1862] LETTER TO STANTON 119 

I have no mounted light artillery under my com- 
mand. 

Several companies of the reserve artillery of the army 
of the Potomac are still here, but not under my command 
or fit for service. 

Of this force I am ordered by General McClellan to 
detail two regiments (good ones) to join Richardson's 
division (Sumner's corps) as it passes through Alexandria; 
one regiment to replace the 37th New York volunteers 
in Heintzelman's old division, and one regiment to re- 
lieve a regiment of Hooker's division at Budd's Ferry. 
Total, four regiments. 

I am further ordered this morning by telegraph to 
send 4,000 men to relieve General Sumner at Manassas 
and Warrenton, that he may embark forthwith. 

In regard to the character and efficiency of the troops 
under my command, I have to state that nearly all the 
force is new and imperfectly disciplined; that several 
of the regiments are in a very disorganized condition 
from various causes, which it is not necessary to state 
here. Several regiments having been relieved from bri- 
gades which have gone into the field, in consequence of 
their unfitness for service, the best regiments remaining 
have been selected to take their place. 

Two heavy artillery regiments and one infantry regi- 
ment, which had been drilled for some months in artil- 
lery service, have been withdrawn from the forts on the 
south side of the Potomac, and I have only been able 
to fill their place with very new infantry regiments, en- 
tirely unacquainted with the duties of that arm, and of 
little or no value in their present position. 

I am not informed as to the position which Major- 
General Banks is directed to take; but at this time he 
is, as I understand, on the other side of the Bull Run 
mountains, leaving my command to cover the front 
from Manassas Gap (about twenty miles beyond Ma- 
nassas) to Aquia creek. 

I deem it my duty to state that, looking at the nu- 
merical strength and character of the force under my 
command, it is, in my judgment, entirely inadequate to, 
and unfit for, the important duty to which it is assigned. 
I regard it very improbable that the enemy will assail 
us at this point; but this belief is based upon the hope 



120 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

that they may be promptly engaged elsewhere, and may 
not learn the number and character of the force left here. 
I have the honor to be your obedient servant, 
JAMES S. WADSWORTH, 
Brigadier General and Military Governor. 
The Hon. Secretary of War. 1 



No man was less fitted than Stanton to bear calmly 
the shock of such a piece of news. To his natural ap- 
prehensions for the safety of the capital and his dis- 
trust of McClellan was now added a sense of outrage at 
an act of high-handed carelessness which had all the as- 
pect of a personal affront. Sending for Lorenzo Thomas, 
the adjutant-general of the army, and for General Hitch- 
cock, he turned over to them the President's instructions 
as given in his War Orders, the recommendations of the 
corps commanders, and the statements of McClellan and 
Wadsworth, and bade them report whether or not the 
commander of the Army of the Potomac had done what 
was required for the defence of the capital. In the course 
of a few hours the two officers made answer that Lin- 
coln's conditions had not been complied with. 2 

The scandal of this situation was not long in spread- 
ing from the War Department to the Capitol, where, at 
the slightest rumor of mismanagement in the Army of 
the Potomac, the Committee on the Conduct of the War 
always promptly met and began summoning witnesses 
to its sessions. Since its inquiries as to the "Quaker 
guns" at Centreville it had had little to feed upon; 
now, on April 3, it assembled to take its fill of sensa- 
tion from Wadsworth's letter and the comments with 
which he elucidated it. As to the number of troops 
which would in his opinion render Washington safe, his 

1 W. R., XI, pt. 3, p. 60. A year later the New York World attacked Wads- 
worth for the statements made in this letter. For his reply and further dis- 
cussion of the subject, see Appendix E. 

2 All the documents are printed in W. R., XI, pt. 3, pp. 57-62. Generals 
Totten, Taylor, Meigs, and Ripley, all of them being familiar with the situa- 
tion at Washington, took the same view. — (W. R., XIX, pt. 2, p. 726.) 



1862] WADSWORTH'S TESTIMONY 121 

estimate is of interest, because, being considerably lower 
than the lowest estimate of McClellan's corps command- 
ers, it shows how httle his judgment was moved in these 
hours of alarm. 

I should say that while the army of the rebels occu- 
pies its present position at Culpeper and Gordonsville, 
with none of our troops between this city and them, 
not less than twenty-five thousand first-class troops 
should occupy the city of Washington and its defences. 
With that number this place can be held against any 
number the rebels can bring against it. When that rebel 
army disperses, which must be soon, of course a less 
number would be required here. If this were any other 
place than the capital of the nation, even a less number 
might be deemed sufficient now; but being the capital, 
while the rebel army remains at Culpeper and Gordons- 
ville, only some forty miles from here, with no army of 
ours in front of them, I think there should be troops 
enough here to render this capital safe beyond any con- 
tingency. 1 

Meanwhile Lincoln, after a long conference at the 
War Department with the various chiefs, directed Stan- 
ton to detain at Alexandria one of the corps of the Army 
of the Potomac which had not yet embarked for the 
Peninsula. Stanton, who had a constitutional tendency 
to panic, chose that of McDowell, the largest in the 
army, having at this time thirty-three thousand men 
present for duty. On April 4 the Department of the 
Rappahannock, with McDowell in command, was created, 
and as the District of Columbia was included in it Wads- 
worth henceforth reported to his old commander. 2 The 
President also cancelled McClellan's order to Wadsworth 
to send regiments to Manassas and to the Army of the 

1 C. W., pt. 1, p. 253. 

2 On the same day the Department of the Shenandoah was created, with 
Banks in command. There were then in the East, as commanders of dis- 
tinct departments, McClellan, McDowell, Banks, Fremont, Wool at For- 
tress Monroe, Dix at Baltimore, Burnside in North Carolina, and Hunter in 
South Carolina. 



122 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Potomac. Finally, to man the forts on the south side of 
the Potomac, two 1 of the three regiments which McClel- 
lan had proposed to take to constitute his siege train were 
retained. The withholding of McDowell's corps at this 
juncture, after Lincoln's "positive and emphatic assur- 
ance" to McClellan that his army should suffer no fur- 
ther depletion, was an act against which McClellan pro- 
tested at the time and on the unfortunate consequences 
of which he and his friends never ceased to harp. Yet 
it is hard to see how, given the men and the situation, 
Lincoln could have done otherwise. As the last word 
on the subject, let him speak in his own defence: 

My explicit order that Washington should, by the 
judgment of all the commanders of army corps, be left 
entirely secure, had been neglected. It was precisely this 
that drove me to detain McDowell. 

I do not forget that I was satisfied with your [Mc- 
Clellan's] arrangement to leave Banks at Manassas Junc- 
tion; but when that arrangement was broken up and 
nothing was substituted for it, of course I was con- 
strained to substitute something for it myself. And 
allow me to ask, do you really think I should permit 
the line from Richmond via Manassas Junction to this 
city to be entirely open except what resistance could be 
presented by less than twenty thousand unorganized 
troops? This is a question which the country will not 
allow me to evade. 2 

The two days of stress over, there was before Wads- 
worth the duty of transferring to the Virginia side of 
the Potomac men to fill the forts which had been stripped 
by McClellan and of sending the raw regiments to a 
camp of instruction near Alexandria. The infantry made 
good progress in proficiency, but the cavalry were for 
the most part unmounted and without arms, save sabres, 3 

1 The 26th New York and the 3d New York Heavy. 

2 W. R., XII, pt. 1, p. 230. 

3 Wadsworth's testimony before the McDowell court of inquiry. — (W. R., 
XII, pt. 1, p. 114.) 



1862] AN IMAGINARY ATTACK 123 

and the light artillery had difficulty in obtaining a supply 
of horses. The deficiencies of Wadsworth's command 
were glaringly revealed on April 19, when, in spite of 
his protest, Stanton insisted that he should suppose the 
city to be attacked, and should order all the troops 
within the city limits to hurry to the long bridge and 
the aqueduct communicating with the Virginia shore. 
There, three hours after the alarm was given, an inspec- 
tion was to be held of the number and condition of the 
troops thus reporting; four thousand one hundred men 
appeared, some with little ammunition, some with none. 
The only regiment that the inspector-general could char- 
acterize as "efficient" was one of cavalry recently re- 
turned from several weeks' hard campaigning in the 
Shenandoah. 1 In the forts on the south side of the 
river, too, ammunition was scarce, and it was only after 
long delays and repeated requisitions that a supply could 
be procured for them. 2 Wadsworth himself has told the 
story of his efforts to put his nondescript army into con- 
dition. 3 

I had some fragments of light artillery companies, 
which I filled up by detailing men from infantry regi- 
ments and unmounted cavalry. The great difficulty was 
as to horses, owing to the numerous requisitions for 
General McClellan's expedition. I procured an order 
from the secretary of war to impress horses in Virginia 
from disloyal citizens 4 and to break up a wagon train 
in the quartermaster's department. In this way I 
mounted two batteries, and subsequently twelve others, 
seven of which were sent into the field, and seven turned 
over to my successor in the command of the defences. 

The impulse that caused Stanton to order Wads- 
worth to assemble his forces to resist an imaginary at- 

1 W. R., XH, pt. 1, pp. 225, 226. J W. R., XII, pt. 1, p. 219. 

3 In a letter in the New York Times, May 15, 1863, written in reply to 
attacks made by partisans of McClellan. See Appendix E. 

* Wadsworth's order to the commander of the expedition contains a charac- 
teristic phrase: "But do not oppress the poor families." — (117 W. R., p. 50.) 



124 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

tack at the very gates of the city is one of not a few- 
instances that show how during the spring of 18G2 the 
secretary's satisfaction in his strategy was from time to 
time darkened by the shadow cast by Stonewall Jack- 
son. In the latter days of April the Confederate com- 
mander's inactivity in the upper part of the valley, where 
Banks was supposed to be watching him strictly, was 
regarded in Washington now as a favorable now as an 
unfavorable omen. Early in May it became known that 
Jackson had been reinforced, and straightway both Mc- 
Dowell at Fredericksburg and Fremont in the mountain 
region w r est of the Shenandoah conceived themselves in 
danger of attack. As for Stanton, on May 9 he ex- 
pressed his belief that "The probabilities at present point 
to a possible attack upon Washington while the Shen- 
andoah army is amused with demonstrations. Washing- 
ton is the only object now worth a desperate throw." 1 
The news of Jackson's sudden descent, the day before, on 
a portion of Fremont's command at the village of Mc- 
Dowell, at the same time that it showed the Secretary 
of War how wide of the mark his guess had been, did 
little to allay his apprehensions of this man who moved 
in mystery. Nevertheless, when Jackson after his vic- 
tory again relapsed into quiet, Lincoln and Stanton felt 
safe in pushing their preparations for strengthening Mc- 
Dowell's force by the addition of Shields's division from 
Banks's command, and for then sending McDowell over- 
land from Fredericksburg to McClellan's aid. 

One or two signs there were, however, which, if prop- 
erly followed up, would have given the Union authori- 
ties the clue to their danger. The railroad from Alex- 
andria to Strasburg in the Shenandoah Valley, which 
had been put in running order as far as Front Royal, 
where it entered the valley through a gap in the Blue 
Ridge, was protected by Colonel Geary with a small 
force. On May 15 a considerable body of Confederate 
1 W. R., VII, pt. 3, p. 151. 



1862] DANGER FROM JACKSON 125 

cavalry dashed down upon one of his outposts, captur- 
ing prisoners and also despatches which Banks was send- 
to him. 1 Wadsworth, on receiving Geary's report, no- 
tified McDowell, who gave orders that log-houses be 
built in which the detachments of Geary's command 
might defend themselves against these roving bodies; he 
also ordered Wadsworth if possible to strengthen Geary's 
force from Washington, but this Wadsworth, having 
stripped the city of troops to go with McDowell, did 
not feel justified in doing. Nevertheless, in spite of Mc- 
Dowell's belief that all was well, Geary was by no means 
satisfied that trouble was not brewing. On the night of 
May 20 he sent a small force from Front Royal to make 
a reconnoissance ten miles up the Luray Valley, and the 
report that was brought back of Confederates approach- 
ing from that direction was so disquieting that it shook 
even the serenity of Banks at Strasburg. 2 In Washing- 
ton, however, all was calm. The President and the Sec- 
retary of War had left for Fredericksburg to witness a 
grand review of McDowell's army before it marched to 
join McClellan, and the capture of Richmond seemed as- 
sured within a few weeks. 

In point of fact, the attack on Geary on May 15, 
which had so disturbed him and which McDowell had 
regarded so philosophically, had been made by a Con- 
federate scouting party sent out for the express purpose 
of tracing the departure of Shields to McDowell's assist- 
ance. The authorities at Richmond had been at once 
notified of this weakening of the Union force in the 
valley; the critical moment had come, the trained eye 
of Lee perceived, for Jackson to make his long-desired 
attempt to threaten Washington by moving against 
Banks, and in this way to check McClellan's advance 
upon Richmond. On May 18, accordingly, the com- 
mander of the Army of the Valley began his famous 

1 W. R., XII, pt. 1, p. 501. 

2 See his letter to Stanton of May 22.— (W. R., XII, pt. 1, p. 524.) 



126 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

"raid." He chose to steal upon his adversary by way 
of the Luray Valley, which is separated by the Massa- 
nutten range from the main valley, and on May 21, 
when the Federal scouting party got wind of his ad- 
vance, he was well on his way toward Front Royal. 
On May 23 he suddenly fell upon the small force there, 
crushed it speedily, and set out at once to cut off Banks 
at Strasburg. 

The astounding events of the succeeding week, when 
Banks, retreating rapidly down the valley, barely got 
his army across the Potomac in safety, and when Jack- 
son, hot in pursuit, threatened Harper's Ferry, produced 
at the War Department a state of mind that for the 
remainder of the war was grimly referred to in the North 
as the "great scare." It was in effect the visiting upon 
Lincoln and Stanton of the full consequences of the ar- 
rangement by which McClellan, McDowell, Banks, and 
Fremont commanded armies working independently of 
each other except for such control as the civilian authori- 
ties at Washington were inspired to give. In a sudden 
crisis requiring the highest degree of military sagacity 
and firmness, these authorities were utterly destitute of 
the experience that breaks the force of instinctive alarm, 
discriminates between possible and probable danger, and 
discerns unerringly between what can and what cannot 
be accomplished. The President and the Secretary of 
War, acting on untrained impulse, ordered McDowell to 
abandon his march toward Richmond and to make all 
haste to the Shenandoah, closing in on Jackson from one 
side while Fremont did the same from the other. Mean- 
while, Northern governors were exhorted in frantic tele- 
grams from Stanton to hurry militia to the defence of 
the capital, upon which, as it seemed to his excited im- 
agination, the troops of the enemy were about to descend 
overwhelmingly. 

From this frenzy of apprehension Wadsworth seems 
to have been altogether free. Against the plans formed 



1862] JACKSON'S RAID 127 

by Lincoln and Stanton, which he felt must prove inef- 
fective and which he was sure were injudicious, he pro- 
tested vigorously, even to the point of overstepping the 
bounds of military etiquette. He did his best to dis- 
suade the President from despatching McDowell on a 
chase after Jackson; 1 he urged that the country be not 
needlessly alarmed by a call for fresh troops. 2 Both ef- 
forts proving vain, however, he turned with a will to 
do his part in the things needful to be done to carry 
into effect the elaborate piece of strategy which Lincoln 
and Stanton had devised to trap Jackson. At one time 
he was sending reinforcements to Geary; at another time 
he was at Alexandria, giving help in the forwarding of 
McDowell's corps to the Shenandoah. He had to quiet 
Stanton, who suddenly discovered that only three hundred 
cavalry had been left in Washington ; he despatched tele- 
grams to McDowell informing him of the state of things 
in the valley; he sent a force up the Potomac to sink 
the boats at the ferries and to guard the fords. It was, 
in fact, one of those times of impromptu co-operation 
when some pieces of work are done twice and others 
not at all. But this medley of effort could have little 
chance of success against the genius of Jackson. On the 
night of May 31 the Confederate general and his "foot 
cavalry" slipped between the Union forces about to close 
in upon them from east and west and made good their 
escape up the Shenandoah. 

The activities brought on by Jackson's raid consti- 
tuted the last of Wadsworth's duties as a commander 
intrusted with the defence of Washington. During the 
eight weeks in which he carried this responsibility he 
had found his time also heavily taxed by his work as 
military governor, particularly, as is about to be nar- 
rated, by reason of a crisis arising from the emancipation 
of the slaves in the District of Columbia. This double 

1 Wadsworth's letter in the New York Times, May 15, 1863. 

2 Gurowski's Diary, 1861-1862, p. 213. 



128 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

set of duties and the exacting demands of each Stanton 
recognized on June 18 by organizing into an army corps 
the forces in and about Washington, except such as were 
needed for provost guard duty, and by placing them under 
the command of Brigadier-General S. D. Sturgis. 1 This 
was only one step in the general reorganization which 
resulted on June 26 in Lincoln's order creating the 
Army of Virginia, to be composed of the troops in the 
Mountain Department, of those in the Departments of 
the Shenandoah and the Rappahannock, and of General 
Sturgis's corps, and to be commanded by Major-General 
John Pope. 2 Henceforth Wadsworth's duties were to be 
exclusively those of an officer exercising military com- 
mand in a place where the civil law held sway. 

It is no easy thing to shut one's eyes to the Wash- 
ington of the present day and to construct a picture of 
the "overgrown watering-place" of sixty-one thousand 
inhabitants which Wadsworth had been called upon to 
govern. The effect produced upon the visitor by its 
temporary and shifting population was intensified by the 
appearance of its unfinished public buildings. The dome 
of the Capitol was a "bare framework of beams and 
girders, surmounted by a crane"; in many places "its 
staring red-brick walls" were "still without their marble 
facings." Work on the Washington Monument had been 
stopped. The Treasury Building, as an observer sug- 
gested, "would make a good Palmyra." "The roads," 
wrote Edward Dicey, the English publicist who visited 
the city in March, 1862, "appear to have been marked 
out and then left uncompleted, and the pigs you see 
grubbing in the main thoroughfares seem in keeping with 
the place. The broken-down ramshackle hackney-coaches 
(or hacks, as they are called), with their shabby negro 
drivers, are obviously brought out for the day, to last 
for the day only; the shops are of the stock Margate 

1 W. R., XII, pt. 3, p. 408. 2 W. R., XII, pt. 3, p. 435. 



1862] CITY OF WASHINGTON 129 

watering-place stamp, where nothing is kept in stock, 
and where what little there is is all displayed in the 
shop-windows. The private houses, handsome enough 
in themselves, are apparently stuck up anywhere the 
owner liked to build them, just as a travelling-van is 
perched on the first convenient spot that can be found 
for a night's lodging." 1 "The whole place looks run up 
in a night, like the cardboard cities which Potemkin 
erected to gratify the eyes of his imperial mistress on 
her tour through Russia; and it is impossible to remove 
the impression that, when Congress is over, the whole 
place is taken down, and packed up again till wanted." 2 

The population of the city at this time was inevi- 
tably nondescript and far from homogeneous. The per- 
manent residents, "a few land-owners who have estates 
in the neighborhood, a few lawyers connected with the 
Supreme Court, and a host of petty tradesmen and lodg- 
ing-house keepers," 3 were naturally Southern in tone and 
sympathy; the temper of the floating population, which 
for long years had been that of the Democratic majority, 
still persisted in these first months of the Republican ad- 
ministration. The military, transient from the nature of 
the case, consisted of new bodies arriving and going into 
camp, other troops returning from the front for various 
reasons, and individuals, privates, and officers, separated 
from their organizations from one cause or another and 
therefore especially difficult of control. Last of all, there 
were the negroes, enslaved and free, to the number of 
nearly thirteen thousand. 4 

For a city so many of whose inhabitants were under 
suspicion as disloyal and which harbored such large num- 
bers of soldiery, the civil authority required supplement- 
ing by some power that at need could be vigorous and 

1 Edward Dicey, Six Months in the Federal States, I, 95. 

2 Ibid., I, 93. 3 Ibid., I, 94. 

4 According to the Census Report of 1860, the number of free blacks iu 
Washington and Georgetown was 10,567 and of slaves 2,351. 



130 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

arbitrary. To this end, during the fall and winter of 
1861-18G2, the provost-marshal general of the Army of 
the Potomac, Colonel A. Porter, had exercised various 
functions in addition to those proper to his office. With 
a force of three thousand men he had maintained a 
military police and guarded the bridges and ferries. He 
also had charge of the state prisoners, confined in what 
was known as the Old Capitol Prison, and controlled a 
detective force which kept under surveillance persons 
suspected of treasonable conduct. Furthermore, it was 
his duty to provide for the negroes, forlorn and half- 
famished, who, as has already been seen, were flocking 
in from Virginia. It was to have charge of all these 
matters and any similar ones arising that, when the Army 
of the Potomac was about to take the field, the office of 
military governor of Washington was created. 

The commander filling this post, however, could 
hardly hope to discharge his duties without sooner or 
later incurring the antagonism of the civil authorities. 
In particular, the composition of the circuit court of the 
District of Columbia was such that trouble of this sort 
could easily be fomented. One judge, it is true, was 
efficient and loyal; but the second was over eighty 
years old, while the third was of decided pro-slavery 
sympathies; indeed, Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, de- 
clared of him in the Senate that "his heart is sweltering 
with treason." * This last judge, far from applying to 
himself the maxim Inter arma silent leges, had chosen 
this as a fitting time to assert the majesty of the law. 
In October, 1861, he had allowed a writ of habeas corpus 
to issue against Colonel Porter, in order that a father 
might get back his seventeen-year-old son who had en- 
listed without his consent. This act of judicial pedan- 
try — not to call it by a worse name — did not, it is hardly 
necessary to say, meet with the approval of the Federal 
government; Lincoln promptly suspended the privilege 

1 Globe, 37 Cong., 3 Sess., 1139. 



1861] THE NEGROES IN WASHINGTON 131 

of the writ in the case of soldiers in the District of Co- 
lumbia, and the judge found himself shut up in his house 
under guard. 1 

The ministerial officer of the court, moreover, Mar- 
shal Ward H. Lamon, who had recently acquired much 
notoriety by his pretentious behavior as Lincoln's con- 
fidential agent and friend and by his claim to be a 
brigadier-general, had adopted a policy in dealing with 
fugitive slaves which, being shaped to please the South- 
ern sympathizers in Washington, would almost certainly 
bring him into collision with any military person in au- 
thority who chanced to be on the side of the negro. 
According to the black code of Maryland and Virginia, 
which prevailed in the District, a slave found abroad 
beyond a certain distance from his master's house and 
unprovided with written authorization from his master 
or overseer was liable to arrest. No free negro was safe 
who had not with him his "certificate of freedom." 2 
The "apprehension fee" paid by the owner for the re- 
covery of a slave was a constant inducement to the row- 
dies in town to become self-constituted kidnappers, and 
the advent of the unvouched-for contrabands from Vir- 
ginia had been an opportunity of which they were not 
slow to take advantage. Under such conditions the city 
jail was soon filled to overflowing with fugitives brought 
there in the hope that their owners would appear to re- 
cover their property and to distribute fees generously. 
To his colleagues in the Senate Wilson, denouncing the 
frightful state of things existing in the jail, in which were 
confined nearly four times as many persons as it was de- 
signed to accommodate, asserted that he had even found 
in it slaves of disloyal masters placed there for safe- 
keeping till the war should be ended ! 3 

1 See Hayward and Hazletine's Reports of the Circuit Court of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, II, 394-401. 

2 Tremain, Slavery in the District of Columbia, p. 39. 

3 Speech of December 4, 1861.— (Globe, 37 Cong., 2 Sess., 10.) 



132 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

In retaliation for the remarks of Wilson and other 
anti-slavery senators, Lamon issued an order to the 
effect that no senator unprovided with a permit from 
him should be allowed to visit the jail. 1 The President 
finally intervened in the squabble and forestalled action 
on the part of Congress by ordering Lamon to clear the 
jail within ten days of all cases held on suspicion; to re- 
ceive into custody no fugitives unless upon arrest or com- 
mitment pursuant to law ; and to retain these not beyond 
thirty days. 2 As a result thirty negroes were set free. 3 

With these circumstances of antecedent irritation, it 
is not surprising that when a military governor of Wash- 
ington appeared in the person of Wadsworth, having 
anti-slavery sympathies irrepressibly militant, the pro- 
tection that he gave to the negro, whether fugitive or 
free, afforded to one judge at least of the circuit court 
and to its marshal occasion for a conflict to which they 
were by no means averse. 

All slaves who had been employed by their disloyal 
masters in some form of work against the United States 
had been by the terms of the Confiscation Act of August, 
1861, set free. According to the interpretation of this 
act permitted by the War Department, the fact of dis- 
loyalty on the part of the master was presumption that 
the slave had been so employed. Such slaves when fugi- 
tives were considered "contraband of war" in the apt 
phrase of General Butler, and were specifically under the 
protection of the military authorities. 4 One of Wads- 
worth's plain first duties as military governor, therefore, 
was to provide adequately for the contrabands in Wash- 

1 The report of the congressional committee appointed to investigate the 
jail showed that Lamon, receiving twenty-one cents a day for the keep of 
each prisoner, was making on that allowance a profit of nearly one hundred 
per cent. — (Neio York Tribune. July 2, 1862.) 

2 Seward to Lamon, January 25, 1862, printed in the National Repub- 
lican, February 1. 

3 National Republican, February 28. 

4 See Seward's letter to McClellan of December 4, 1861. — (Greeley's 
American Conflict, II, 244.) 



1862] THE NEGROES IN WASHINGTON 133 

ington from Virginia, the number of whom had been in- 
creasing rapidly since the withdrawal of the Confederates 
toward Richmond. 1 He accordingly gave them quarters 
in what was known as Duff Green's Row, east of the 
Capitol, and he assigned them a superintendent charged 
with the duties of attending to their necessities, provid- 
ing them with work, and teaching them the difficult task 
of learning to work for themselves. Food for all was 
supplied by the government, which also employed many 
of the men as laborers at forty cents a day. Through 
Wadsworth's efforts some of their wants were supplied 
from the goods confiscated from blockade-runners ; others 
were ministered to by the National Freedmen's Associa- 
tion, recently formed for this purpose. Representatives 
of other like philanthropic bodies came to labor among 
them, schools were established, and in the course of a 
few months these fugitives were learning the first lessons 
of freedom under auspices that were both kindly and 
firm. In June 200 women and children and 100 men 

1 The condition of these unfortunates was vividly described by Edward 
Dicey, who went to Manassas on the first train to run after the road had 
been rebuilt from Alexandria: 

"On our return to the cars [at Manassas] we came upon a strange living 
evidence of the results of this strange war. Huddled together upon a truck 
were a group of some dozen runaway slaves. There were three men, four 
women, and half a dozen children. Anything more helpless or wretched 
than their aspect I never saw. Miserably clothed, footsore, and weary, 
they crouched in the hot sunlight more like animals than men. They seemed 
to have no idea, no plan, and no distinct purpose. They were field-hands 
on a farm some score of miles off, and had walked all night; so at least they 
told us. Now they were going North as far as Washington, which appeared 
to them the end of the world. They had no fear of being recaptured, partly 
I think, because they had reached Northern troops, still more because then- 
home seemed to them so far away. With the exception of one woman, 
who was going to look for her husband, who was hired out somewhere in 
the District of Columbia, they talked as if they had no friends or acquaint- 
ances in the new land they were travelling to. For the present they were 
content that they could sit in the sun without being forced to work. Some 
of our party gave them money, and broken victuals which they valued more. 
I overheard one of the men saying to a woman, as he munched some white 
bread he had picked up, 'Massa never gave us food like that.' Poor things, 
if their idea of freedom was white bread and rest, they must have been dis- 
appointed bitterly!"— (Federal States, U, 29, 30.) 



134 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

were thus taken care of; 1 during one week in July there 
were 37G arrivals, 15G of whom found employment at 
once. 2 

The treatment of fugitives from Maryland could not 
be so simple. They had escaped from masters who were 
still residing on their plantations and who either were 
loyal or, if disloyal, made a pretence of allegiance to 
the Union. Loyal masters were, of course, entitled to 
the assistance of the law in getting back such of their 
slaves as ran away; by the same token it was absurd 
and, from Wadsworth's point of view, unendurable that 
men who were working to overthrow the Federal govern- 
ment should be able to invoke its laws to recover their 
human property. He therefore adopted the policy of 
taking measures to inform himself as to the loyalty of 
the master of a fugitive brought before him, and, when 
he had become satisfied that the master was of seces- 
sion sympathies, of issuing to the negro a paper stating 

that "the bearer, A B , colored, is under the 

protection of the military authorities of the District." 3 
When Wadsworth put his signature to one of these "mil- 
itary protections," as they were called, he intended it to 
guarantee to the fugitive the full strength of his author- 
ity as a bulwark against both the violence of the hood- 
lum kidnappers and the activity of the civil power. 

Meanwhile, at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue 
there were signs that told of the progress of events 
toward Emancipation. On March 6 Lincoln sent to Con- 
gress his message recommending that the United States 
co-operate with any State to secure gradual emancipa- 
tion; on March 10 Congress passed an additional article 
of war prohibiting officers from employing the forces 
under their command to return fugitives; and on April 
16 the act abolishing slavery within the District of Co- 
lumbia received the President's signature. There were 

1 National Republican, June 11, 1862. 2 Ibid., July 21. 

3 Ibid., July 21. 



1862] EMANCIPATION IN THE DISTRICT 135 

also under discussion in Congress various measures the 
purpose of which was to extend the scope of the Confis- 
cation Act of August, 1861, along the line which Wads- 
worth was already following. 

During the debates on the bill liberating slaves in 
the District of Columbia, the excitement in Washington 
and in the adjoining counties of Maryland became daily 
more and more intense. Within the District indignant 
slave-holders, none too loyal at best to the cause of the 
Union, perceiving that their protests against the measure 
were likely to be in vain, began to remove their slaves 
to Maryland; 1 but with the new haven of safety so near 
at hand they could hardly be surer of retaining their 
property there than if they had tried to keep it at home. 
The events of the next few weeks justified their appre- 
hensions, for cases of escaping slaves became more and 
more frequent. Moreover, the activity of kidnappers and 
their use of fire-arms in running down their prey created 
a situation of disorder which was likely at any moment 
to require stringent measures from the military governor. 
The slave-holders of the region about Washington knew 
Wadsworth to be a man whose actions were likely to be 
even better than his words, and by way of heading him 
off they began to clamor for the machinery of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law, in order to effect the recovery of their 
slaves under the protection of the courts. Of the will- 
ingness of the circuit court of the District of Columbia 
to appoint the necessary commissioners under the law 
they had no doubt, for they considered as of no weight 
the argument of anti-slavery men that neither the con- 
stitutional provision guaranteeing the right of an owner 
to a slave escaping from one State to another State, nor 
the fugitive slave laws of 1793 and 1850, covered the 
case of a slave escaping from a State to the District of 

1 It was estimated that about two thousand slaves were removed from 
the District before the Emancipation Act was passed.— {National Repub- 
lican, June 19.) 



136 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

Columbia. 1 To make assurance doubly sure, however, 
the Maryland slave-owners decided to lay their case be- 
fore the President. On Monday, May 19, a delegation 
of them, led by some of their members of Congress, ap- 
peared before him to urge that they should not be de- 
prived of the benefit of the law upon which they were 
relying. This being the period of Lincoln's "Border 
State policy," the time when he was bending every effort 
to induce the border States to initiate a course of com- 
pensated emancipation, he was inclined to give the Mary- 
landers the benefit of the doubtful situation. Though he 
made no explicit reply to their representations, they went 
away in good spirits, having, so they declared, private 
intimations that their request would not be denied.' 2 At 
any rate, some forty of them betook themselves to the 
court-house to procure warrants for the reclamation of 
their property, and on the same day the circuit court, 
promptly fulfilling their expectations, appointed three 
commissioners to hear any case arising under the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law. 

The incompleteness of the measures of emancipation 
already passed by Congress became apparent the instant 
the omnipotence of this remarkable statute was invoked; 
the marshal and his deputies, impelled by the powerful 
vis a tergo of heavy fines, overran the town. 3 They could 
invade the contraband quarters with impunity; they 
could even make search through the regimental camps, 
for the article of war recently passed, though forbidding 
officers to return fugitives, made no provision for keeping 
out civil authorities bent on such an errand. Wads- 
worth's military protections counted for naught, and 
Lamon's promise that a fugitive thus provided should, 

1 See Sumner's speech of May 23, 1862 (Globe, 37 Cong., 2 Sess., 2306), 
and an editorial in the New York Tribune, May 30, 1863. 

2 New York Evening Post, May 19. 

3 The marshal was required to make unusual exertions to enforce the 
law under penalty of a fine of one thousand dollars. If the slave escaped the 
marshal was liable to a civil suit. 



1862] WADSWORTH AND THE COURTS 137 

if apprehended, be turned back to him, in order that the 
loyalty of the master might again be investigated, was 
evaded. One negro, arrested in spite of a "protection," 
was tried and returned to his master with such speed 
that Wadsworth had no opportunity to make his inves- 
tigation. In other cases Wadsworth was not notified 
at all. 

In the course of their legalized prowlings, Lamon's 
officials came to the camp of the Seventy-sixth New 
York. Here the anti-slavery spirit of the plain soldiers, 
responsive to the dictates of the "higher law," brought 
the slave-hunters to a stand, and the camp, which con- 
tained a number of negroes acting as officers' servants 
and in other capacities, went unsearched. On the next 
day, however, May 22, as the regiment marched through 
the streets of the city, it was set upon by the same men. 
The fugitives were being protected by the menace of 
bayonets and by a few good knock-down blows from 
clubbed muskets, but on sight of the writs the officers 
of the regiments ordered their men to desist, and two 
captives were taken off for trial. 1 

At the court-house, whither the victims were brought 
to appear before the commissioners, further demonstra- 
tion of the might of the Fugitive Slave Law within the 
District was now to be given. These gentlemen, who 
were of assured conservative, if not Southern, proclivi- 
ties, had that morning announced a decision that the 
law (Section 6) required their proceedings to be ex 'parte 
and summary, and that they were not competent to in- 
quire as to the loyalty of the claimant except when he 
resided in a State that had seceded. 2 By this decision, 

1 See the History of the 76th N. Y., p. 57, where it is noted with pride 
that the incident was reported in the London papers. 

2 National Intelligencer and Maryland News Sheet of May 24. The com- 
missioners further decided that a slave could not participate by cross- 
examination or counter-proof, but that they might at their discretion cross- 
examine or allow counter-proof in his behalf. In a later case they announced 
their willingness to admit testimony to show that slaves had been employed 
against the United States Government. — (National Republican, June 13.) 



138 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

the slave-holders of Maryland, a large number of whom, 
it is to be remembered, were disloyal, would be able to 
recover their fugitive slaves without the disagreeable ne- 
cessity of taking the oath of allegiance to the United 
States Government. Veritably, on this day the slave 
power reached the ne plus ultra of its legal triumphs, and 
that, too, in the capital of the nation. 

A decision much less extreme than this would have 
sufficed to stir up Wadsworth's fighting spirit; as it was, 
he was now ready to go to almost any length in uphold- 
ing the dignity of the military arm in the city of Wash- 
ington. The spark which touched off his quick temper 
was the news brought to him at the end of this same 
day that Althea Lynch, a mulatto having one of his pro- 
tections, had been put in the city jail overnight pending 
further examination by the commissioners. "It stands 
upon something like record," to employ a serviceable 
phrase of the elder Trevelyan, that the said Althea Lynch 
was cook in the Wadsworth household and that the pros- 
pects were dark for breakfast the next morning; but per- 
haps it is safer to regard this assertion as an embellish- 
ment of the narrative. At any rate, having personal 
knowledge that her owner was disloyal, Wadsworth sent 
to the jail and demanded the release of the prisoner. 
The jailer refused. A second demand, threatening force, 
was also denied. Then Wadsworth, at about nine o'clock 
in the evening, sent thither his aide, Lieutenant John A. 
Kress, with a dozen soldiers, who, after considerable par- 
leying, arrested the jailer and also the deputy-marshal, 
who had arrived upon the scene, took possession of 
the jail, and set free not only the mulatto in question 
but all the other contrabands there confined. Lamon, 
now aroused, dashed to the White House, only to dis- 
cover that the President was out of town, and then, col- 
lecting a force of city police, proceeded to the jail at 
two o'clock in the morning. Finding there only two of 
Wadsworth's men, he was easily able to turn the tables 



1802] WADSWORTH AND THE COURTS 139 

on the military. Later in the day there was a courteous 
release of the prisoners captured by both sides in this 
engagement, but the marshal did not regain possession 
of Althea Lynch. 

Meanwhile the situation in its legal aspects was un- 
dergoing rapid developments. On the decision of the 
commissioners that one of the negroes snatched from the 
ranks, as it were, of the Seventy-sixth New York was 
to be returned to his master, the lawyer, John Dean 
of Brooklyn, who had been employed to defend the 
fugitive, applied for a writ of habeas corpus in order to 
test the applicability of the Fugitive Slave Law in the 
District of Columbia. Dean's argument had weight with 
anti-slavery lawyers at least; but the refusal of his appli- 
cation by the circuit court 1 made it plain that the only 
hope of remedy lay in Congress. As that body was not 
yet ready to repeal or to suspend the Fugitive Slave 
Law, 2 a bill was introduced on June 18 to abolish the 
circuit court and to establish instead a supreme court, 
but owing to the lateness of the session, it never came 
to a vote. 3 

In spite of the decision of the circuit court, Wads- 
worth yielded not an inch of ground. Taking the atti- 
tude that it was not one of the circuit courts to which 
power had been given to appoint commissioners to act 
under the Fugitive Slave Law, he in July released ne- 
groes imprisoned by Lamon; moreover, in August and 
again in September he arrested some of Lamon's officers 
as kidnappers. But for all his zeal and watchfulness it 

1 U. S. ex rel. Wm. Copeland. — (Hayward and Hazletine's Reports of the 
Circuit Court of the D. of C, II, 402.) 

2 Sumner's resolution, introduced May 22, to prevent the seizure of fugi- 
tives in the District of Columbia, failed of passage. 

3 Congress did, however, pass an act providing for the education of the 
colored children in the District and abolishing the black code, and an act 
remedying defects in the first act of emancipation. By the Emancipation 
and Confiscation Act, approved July 17, under which such slaves of persons 
giving aid and comfort to the rebellion as came in any way under the con- 
trol of the government were freed and the return of fugitives to such mas- 
ters was prohibited, Wadsworth's hand was strengthened somewhat. 



140 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

was only in sporadic cases that he could do anything to 
break the sweep of the Fugitive Slave Law. On October 
30, to cite but one of several instances, Commissioner 
Phillips returned to slavery in Maryland two boys of ten 
and eleven and a girl of three who had been snatched 
from their place of refuge the day before under pecul- 
iarly distressing circumstances. 1 At the end of Wads- 
worth's service as military governor, a few weeks later, 
the civil and the military authorities of the District were 
as much at odds as ever on this subject, and the 
disagreement existing there was typical of the divided 
opinion on the question of Emancipation throughout the 
North. 2 

In reviewing Wadsworth's anti-slavery activity as mili- 
tary governor of Washington, two things are to be borne 
in mind. In the first place, the working principle adopted 
by him that no fugitive should be remanded to slavery 
without an examination on the part of the military au- 
thorities concerning the loyalty of his master — a rule which 
came to be called the habeas corpus of the contraband — was 
an interpretation of the Confiscation Act of 1861 which, 
as has been said, was sanctioned by the War Depart- 
ment and which, moreover, was incorporated in the Con- 

1 National Republican, November 5. 

2 The newspapers from which I have chiefly drawn this account of Wads- 
worth's contest with the civil authorities in the District of Columbia are 
the Washington National Intelligencer, Washington National Republican, New 
York Tribune, and the New York Evening Post. 

The outcome of the contest in 1863 is worth narrating. On March 3, 
by act of Congress, the circuit, district, and criminal courts of the District of 
Columbia were abolished and a supreme court created in their room. A 
petition of forty-eight lawyers of the District against the bill had no weight 
with the Senate, and the debate showed clearly that the reason for the 
change was in large measure to get rid of the pro-slavery judges. The new 
court, however, composed of Judges Cartter, of Ohio; Olin, of New York; 
Fisher, of Delaware; and Wylie, of Virginia, when the first fugitive slave case 
came before it, was evenly divided as to its power to act. Judge Cartter in 
a few words stated his conviction that the court had the power, apologizing 
for his failure to argue the matter by saying: "My brethren, perhaps, can 
furnish better reasons for their opinion than I can for mine." — (D. of C. Re- 
ports, Supreme Court, VI, 11.) The judge who had issued the warrant now 
made an elaborate argument to prove that he had no right to issue it, and 



1862] WADSWORTH AND LINCOLN 141 

fiscation Act of July, 1862. In the second place, Wads- 
worth, who was constantly sought in conference by Lin- 
coln and Stanton on matters both military and political, 
had throughout the benefit of their suggestion and sup- 
port. Though eager to take part with his old brigade in 
McDowell's anticipated advance on Richmond from Fred- 
ericksburg, he yielded to their requests to continue in his 
present position. Lincoln himself knew that his own pe- 
riod of border-State probation could not last long. Fore- 
seeing the day when he himself must join the ranks of 
the emancipationists, he had no inclination to displace a 
man of Wadsworth's caliber who was doing all that he 
could to shape popular opinion in favor of the great war 
measure that was soon to be. In fine, Wadsworth's ca- 
reer as military governor in this respect is an admirable 
instance of the distinct public service that can be rendered 
by a man of individual force and weight who, being inde- 
pendent of the fear of any constituency and careless of 
consequences to himself, has the rare satisfaction of car- 
rying out, in spite of opposition, what he himself feels to 
be right and necessary. Of such cases during the Civil 
War there were none too many. 

To pass to other duties of Wadsworth's office: his 
general watch over residents of the adjoining counties 

discharged the fugitive. When the negro attempted to leave the court-room, 
however, a scuffle ensued over him between his master and Dean, his lawyer. 
Dean was arrested on a charge of obstructing the operation of the Fugitive 
Slave Law, though he was never brought to trial; the negro was delivered 
to the military authorities and obtained his freedom by enlisting in a col- 
ored regiment. On the next day the court appointed a commissioner to 
hear fugitive slave cases. Dean protested against the appointment in vain, 
and the commissioner was returning slaves to their masters as late as No- 
vember, 1863. — (See National Intelligencer, November 19, 1863.) But the en- 
listment of colored troops in Maryland under an order by which an owner could 
obtain three hundred dollars for every slave whom he allowed to become a 
soldier reduced considerably the number of fugitives after this time. The 
Fugitive Slave Law, like Charles II, was an unconscionable time a-dying, 
and the courts of the District of Columbia, having exhausted all their reme- 
dies, stood by the bedside of the expiring patient and nursed it till the end 
with tender and assiduous care. Slavery was abolished in Maryland in Octo- 
ber, 1864; the fugitive slave laws were repealed on June 28, 1864. 



142 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

of Maryland and Virginia, maintained, as has already 
been indicated, so that the Federal government might 
not suffer from treason enveloping the capital, was a part 
of his task that required the constant exercise of vigor 
and tact. The record of his activities along this line is 
considerable, though not in detail particularly illumina- 
ting. It included such acts as sending to Leesburg, 
Virginia, to break up the sessions of a court held there 
under Confederate laws; releasing a jailful of fugitive 
slaves at the same place; searching out Maryland planters 
who had been active in giving help to deserters from the 
Army of the Potomac; arresting as hostages citizens of 
Alexandria and Fredericksburg. The Old Capitol Prison, 
where all such political prisoners were confined, was also 
under his charge, and in his control of its inmates he 
tempered with humanity as far as he might the strict 
justice which the situation required. Some of the pris- 
oners had been seized in retaliation for seizures of Union 
non-combatants made by the Confederate authorities; 
some were in truth guilty of treason; but all were in- 
sistent in asserting the injustice of their imprisonment 
and in demanding release. In informing himself as to 
the merits of each of these cases, in helping the prisoners 
to communicate with their friends, and in attending to 
their exchange or release, Wadsworth consumed many 
hours. 

The story of his treatment of one of these prisoners 
may be told in illustration of this part of his work; 
moreover, it has a sequel in which the bread he cast 
upon the waters was returned in a fashion as moving 
as it was miraculous. Patrick McCracken, living on a 
small farm on the outskirts of that forest region be- 
yond Fredericksburg destined to a double fame from 
the battles of Chancellorsville and the Wilderness, was 
brought to Washington as a spy and imprisoned. Wads- 
worth, investigating the circumstances, learned of his 
hard-working life, heard the need that family and farm 



1862] CARE OF SOLDIERS 143 

had of him, and, believing that the stability of the na- 
tional government would in nowise be threatened by 
the freedom of this poor white, let him go, receiving 
from him a promise that he would, as far as lay within 
his power, withhold aid from the Confederacy. For 
Wadsworth the incident ended there: the thought of 
the man thus befriended in the course of the day's work 
probably never again crossed his consciousness. But the 
gratitude of McCracken, biding its time, found at last 
the opportunity for which it had been waiting. 

Not only for political offenders had Wadsworth re- 
sponsibility but also for prisoners captured on the field 
of battle. From the nature of the case the treatment 
of prisoners must be one of the weak spots of warfare, 
even when war is conducted, to quote the language of 
one of McClellan's circulars, "upon the highest princi- 
ples known to Christian civilization"; 1 and it was not 
till July 22, 1862, that a cartel of exchange was agreed 
to between the Union and the Confederate authorities. 
When an exchange was about to be negotiated through 
General Dix stationed at Fortress Monroe, Wadsworth 
provided him with lists of Union soldiers in the hands of 
the Confederates and, at the proper time, despatched to 
Fortress Monroe the Confederate prisoners about Wash- 
ington. He it was, too, who received the wasted boys in 
blue, numerically deemed their equivalents. 2 

Then there were the sick and wounded soldiers. Of 
the twenty-one thousand who during July and August, 
after McClellan's defeat in the Peninsula, had been 
sent in transports and hospital ships to ports in the 
North, 3 Washington had its share. Though the pro- 
vision there for them was hopelessly inadequate, Stan- 
ton nevertheless issued an order 4 putting a stop to the 

1 W. R., XI, pt. 3, p. 364. 

2 Three thousand eight hundred and forty-five sick and wounded pris- 
oners, received in exchange or on parole, were sent to Washington and other 
Northern cities between July 15 and August 3. — (W. R., XI, pt. 1, p. 215.) 

3 Report of Medical Director Letterman. — (VV. R., XI, pt. 1, pp. 212, 216.) 

4 G. O. No. 78, July 14, published in National Republican, July 26. 



144 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

practice of granting furloughs to wounded men and re- 
quiring them to remain where they were. The discovery 
by Lincoln and Stanton of the astonishing depletion of 
McClellan's army through absences unaccounted 1 for was 
the immediate occasion of this severe requirement; yet in 
many a case it caused most unnecessary suffering. The 
story of Wadsworth's successful protest is told by Colo- 
nel Clinton H. Meneely, who at the time was serving 
as aide on his staff: 



The hospitals in and around Washington were filled 
with sick and wounded soldiers, and the disabled officers 
had to get accommodation, if such it could be called, in 
miserable quarters, everything being crowded. General 
Wadsworth was personally acquainted with some of the 
officers who, though wounded in battle, were yet able 
to travel, and who were confined in wretched buildings. 
He went to the War Department with the request that 
any and all of these officers be allowed to go to their 
homes. The reply was that it would take fully two weeks 
to get the proper surgical certificates made out, thus 
holding the officers in the city all of that time; and one 
red-tape official said that some of the officers, thus re- 
moved from Washington, might desert. The ready an- 
swer of General Wadsworth to this last statement was 
that the quicker men of that character deserted, the 
better for the service; and he readily persuaded Presi- 
dent Lincoln to have an order issued at once that all 
wounded and sick officers could go to their homes im- 
mediately after leaving their names and addresses at 
headquarters. The suffering officers left the city in a 
few hours' time, as might be imagined. One young 
man whose home was in General Wadsworth's own town, 
and who had been compelled to take shelter in a swel- 
tering room over a noisy saloon, showed General Wads- 
worth a spent bullet which had broken his jaw and 
lodged itself under his tongue, and he wrote his "thank 
you" as he started to meet his mother in his New York 
home. 2 



1 See Lincoln's letter to McClellan of July 13.— (W. R., XI, pt. 3, p. 319.) 

2 From a private letter. 



1862] THE CALL FOR TROOPS 145 

Another officer, Captain James McMillan, conva- 
lescing from " Chickahominy fever" at Long Branch, 
was stung into going back to Washington by reading 
articles in the newspapers assailing men at home on 
sick leave. Wadsworth, meeting him on the street and 
learning that he was proposing to go to the front, told 
him that he was going to his grave instead, took him 
before the Secretary of War, and obtained an order de- 
tailing him for duty in Detroit. 1 Many similar inci- 
dents that are preserved show how constant were these 
acts of kindly care, all the result of individual initiative 
cutting across the tangle of official red tape. 

Through the North the summer of 1862 was a sea- 
son of renewed consecration. Lincoln's calls for three 
hundred thousand volunteers for three years and three 
hundred thousand for nine months, made necessary by 
the failure of McClellan's Peninsula campaign, brought 
home to every man of military age the ultimate ques- 
tion of patriotism. The following correspondence be- 
tween father and son is typical of the fashion in which 
the depths were sounded in many a family: 

Geneseo, Sunday, Aug. 10, '62. 

My Dear Father: — 

I write you this to inform you of the fact that I 
commenced yesterday recruiting in Buffalo for the new 
Buffalo Regiment with the intention of going myself 
when the company is full as First Lieutenant. 

My dear Father, I have taken this determination 
from a sense of duty to my country and hope most sin- 
cerely that it will meet with your approval as I think it 
will- 
When I wrote you two weeks ago you said you could 
not advise me to go but would write again. From this 
I inferred that you were undecided on the subject, and 
did not wish to say yes or no. I am an able-bodied 

1 Letter of Mrs. McMillan to J. W. Wadsworth. 



146 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

young man and all such should immediately rally around 
the flag of our country in this her greatest hour of peril. 

I have no family whose daily bread depends upon 
my exertions and therefore am not exempt in any man- 
ner from the call of my country for volunteers to save 
and preserve her from disaster and utter ruin 

In raising this company I have associated with me 
Mr. John Higgins, an officer of the Buffalo Tigers, . . . 
who sacrifices more than I do to save his country. He 
will be captain of the company. We have only this next 
week to raise the company, as drafting will then com- 
mence. We have already recruited about twenty men. 
We have already received our permits to recruit from 
Albany. Mother is quite reconciled to my going and 
I hope, my dear Father, that you will not be displeased 
with this act of 

Your affectionate son, 

CHARLES F. WADSWORTH. 1 

Washington, D. C. 

August 13, 18C2. 

My Dear Son: — 

I have just received your letter of the 10th. I 
approve of your determination to enter the service and 
the honorable reasons you give for taking this step. It 
is sad for your dear mother to have all of us exposed to 
the hazards of war, but if the poor and those with limited 
means leave their families to the charity of their neigh- 
bors or to the uncertain chances of employment, there is 
little reason for our remaining at home. 

I like too your taking the modest position of Lieu- 
tenant. It is really the post you are at present best 
fitted to fill, and there is not much patriotism in seeking 
an honorable position before you have earned it. 

I will pay an extra bounty of ten dollars to all who 
join your company. Show this to Mr. Janes and he 
will advance the funds. If you go into this business 
give your whole heart and time to it. Get your com- 

1 Charles F. Wadsworth was commissioned first lieutenant in the 116th 
New York Volunteers, and later became captain. He served under Banks 
in the Department of the Gulf, was present at the siege of Port Hudson, 
and was brevetted major "for gallant and meritorious services during the 
war." 



1862] EMANCIPATION AND McCLELLAN 147 

pany organized as soon as possible and join one of the 
first regiments coming to the field. Study the "Tactics" 
thoroughly and the Army Regulations, and make your- 
self master of all your duties. 
God bless you, my dear son, 

Your affectionate father, 

J. S.W. 



But this passion of sacrifice was ever troubled by 
the question, To what end? Was it for Union alone, or 
was it for Union and Freedom? To Horace Greeley's 
"Prayer of Twenty Millions" asking for Emancipation, 
Lincoln replied with the baffling, balanced phrases of a 
leader who is still waiting for the hour to strike. On 
this point the strife of factions in the Republican party 
threatened to rend the organization in twain. In Wash- 
ington, where the strife was heightened and complicated 
by the ardor of McClellan's opponents and followers, the 
military and political cross-currents made a confusion to 
tax the skill of the adroitest navigator. The walls of 
Wadsworth's office in the old mansion at the corner of 
Madison Place and Pennsylvania Avenue gave back the 
sound of many imprecations uttered by Kearney, Hooker, 
and other officers in reciting the disasters of McClellan's 
army. Thither came the green-goggled Polish exile Gu- 
rowski, idealist and newsmonger; the sting of his tongue 
spared few men in public life, but for Wadsworth he had 
nothing but praise. 1 The Washington correspondents of 
the great dailies knew the place well, and the anti-slavery 
readers of the New York Tribune, through the diligence 
of A. S. Hill, 2 could follow from day to day the story of 
Wadsworth's fight to keep his contrabands clear of the 
clutches of the Fugitive Slave Law. When, as in Hill's 
case, the journalist had Wadsworth's confidence, he ob- 
tained glimpses of that inner world of politics where 

'The last volume of Gurowski's Diary, published after Wadsworth's 
death, is dedicated to his memory. 

2 Later professor of English at Harvard. 



148 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

impatience, half-knowledge, and suspicion were playing 
havoc with the loyalty of devoted men, who, though all 
working toward one great end, were not yet in accord as 
to the means. The following extracts from Hill's letters 
to Sydney Howard Gay, managing editor of the Tribune, 
are quoted by Mr. Rhodes in his history: 

General Wadsworth says that in all the councils of 
war which he attended he never heard a word of econ- 
omy, never from President, secretary of war, chief of 
ordnance, or General Meigs. Millions of money were to 
them as to ordinary men star distances; whether two or 
three hundred billions of miles, what difference? 1 

Ten minutes' talk last night with General Wads- 
worth. The result this: he is cheerful in view of mili- 
tary prospects, but thinks political signs gloomy. I value 
his testimony because he has, as he says, been with the 
President and Stanton every day at the War Depart- 
ment — frequently for five or six hours — during several 
months. He says that the President is not with us; has 
no anti-slavery instincts. He never heard him speak of 
anti-slavery men otherwise than as "radicals," "aboli- 
tionists"; and of the "nigger question" he frequently 
speaks. Talking against McClellan with Blair, in Lin- 
coln's presence, Wadsworth was met by Blair with the 
remark, "He'd have been all right if he'd stolen a couple 
of niggers." A general laugh, in which Lincoln laughed, 
as if it were an argument. Wadsworth believes that if 
emancipation comes at all it will be from the rebels, or 
in consequence of their protracting the war. 2 

This political and military coil, however, gave way 
to the demands of the moment for the safety of Wash- 
ington, when, late in August, Lee pushed Pope back 
toward the capital and engaged him in the second battle 
of Bull Run. For four days, while direct communica- 
tion with the army was entirely cut off, 3 the city thrilled 
with the painful excitement of a battle in progress thirty 

1 Rhodes, History of the U. S., IV, 208, foot-note. 

2 Ibid., IV, 64, foot-note. 3 Ropes, II, 317. 



1862] SECOND BULL RUN 149 

miles away. At Alexandria McClellan was forwarding 
troops to Pope with such slowness as to raise serious 
suspicion of his good-will; and Herman Haupt, the man 
who, as Lincoln said, "could build a bridge of bean-poles 
and corn-stalks," 1 was working day and night to repair 
the railroad to Manassas. In Washington contrabands 
and stragglers from the army were arriving, coming in 
throngs over the bridges like harbingers of the approach 
cf the Confederate hosts; to the call for nurses to go 
to the battle-field, department clerks responded by the 
hundred; surgeons by the hundred, too, began to arrive 
from the cities of the North; Wadsworth seized all the 
available vehicles in the city and despatched them under 
a cavalry guard to Centreville to bring back the wounded. 
With the positive news of Pope's disaster and his 
retreat upon the city, uncertainty gave place to alarm. 
Orders were given for the removal to New York of most 
of the contents of the arsenal, and Wadsworth was in- 
structed to form the clerks and employees in the public 
buildings into companies and to provide them with arms 
and ammunition. 2 McClellan had been restored to the 
command of the Army of the Potomac, but the disorgan- 
ization of the troops and the mystery of Lee's move- 
ments in the days following the battle sharpened the 
edge of apprehension. Halleck, the nervous and pedantic 
general-in-chief, had fears of a night raid of the enemy's 
cavalry into the city; as late as September 7 Secretary 
Chase "found Stanton, Pope, and Wadsworth uneasy on 
account of critical condition of affairs." 3 On the next 
day he wrote in his diary: "Barney, collector of New 
York, came in, and said that Stanton and Wadsworth 
had advised him to leave for New York this evening, as 
communication with Baltimore might be cut off before 
to-morrow. . . . Went to War Department, where found 

»Nicolay and Hay, VI. 10. 2 W. R., XII, pt. 3, pp. 802, 805, 807. 

3 Chase's Diary. — (Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 
1902, n, 68.) 



150 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

the President, Stanton, and Wadsworth. The President 
said he had felt badly all day. Wadsworth said there 
was no danger of an attack on Washington, and that the 
men ought to be severely punished who intimated the 
possibility of its surrender." 

His conviction that Washington was in no danger was 
soon justified; within a day or so it was almost certain 
that Lee, having entered Maryland, was in the vicinity 
of Frederick City, forty miles away. But Wadsworth's 
care concerning the safety of the city, engrossing though 
it had been, troubled him less than the thought of the 
part played by military jealousies and bad generalship 
in bringing disaster upon the Union army. As the news 
of the defeats on the Peninsula had caused him many a 
sleepless night, so now the disgrace of this recent defeat 
at Bull Run set him pacing up and down his office, try- 
ing to master his agony of distress at the sacrifice of 
human lives required by men unable to subdue love of 
self to love of country. It is the penalty of the patriot 
that his keenest suffering is caused by the dearth of patri- 
otism in others. 

In this year of Emancipation still another call came 
to Wadsworth to champion the cause of anti-slavery 
for men who were trying to place the issue of the war 
squarely on the basis of freedom. As candidate of the 
Union Republicans for governor in the fall campaign 
in New York, he stood before the whole country rep- 
resenting what was demanded by the radical wing of 
the party. 

Having declined the nomination for governor in I860, 
in order that Morgan might have a second term, Wads- 
worth would naturally be the candidate in 1862, other 
things being equal. His own feeling on this point he 
expressed in a letter written August 22 to James C. 
Smith, of Canandaigua, who had been his comrade in 
politics ever since the Barnburner days of 1848. 



1862] LETTER TO SMITH 151 

Washington, D. C, August 22, 1862. 

My Dear Sir:— 

... I do not find any sufficient reason for abso- 
lutely refusing to accept the nomination for governor, 
but I unaffectedly dread it, and long to be at home and 
rid of public cares. While I do not seriously doubt that 
I can get on reasonably well with the ordinary duties 
of the office, I know that a candidate coming in by com- 
mon consent, as it were, must disappoint many of his 
supporters. "Availability" is very pleasant while run- 
ning, but greatly increases the embarrassment of execut- 
ing the duties of an office. 

I have another objection to being a candidate: I 
wish you to go to the Senate, not for your own sake, but 
because I believe you are the fittest man. My election 
would interfere with this on the ground that we are both 
from the same geographical section. This is really an 
objection of no force, but it would be made to have a 
good deal of influence. 

I have tried to be ordered to the field, in which case 
I should peremptorily decline the nomination; but I have 
not been successful, partly I think because the Secretary 
of War wishes me to accept the nomination. He is out 
and out of our views on the slavery question, and wishes 
New York to stand unequivocal in that question. Who 
would be, or could be, nominated, if I were out of the 
way, and what do you advise? 

I may add that I am doing, as I think, some good 
here, and in certain contingencies I may be able to do 
more good here than even in the exalted position re- 
ferred to. 

Please write me frankly. 

Truly yours, 

JAMES S. WADSWORTH. 

P. S. I feel that this last hasty request is quite un- 
necessary and hardly polite. 

This letter, giving with directness and without re- 
serve Wadsworth's own views about his nomination, 
shows also that, absorbed in his military duties, he had 
taken little pains to keep in touch with the intricate 
state of politics at home. The differences between the 



152 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

two factions in the Republican party in New York, re- 
sulting from the defeat of Seward at Chicago in 1800 
and the thwarting of Horace Greeley's senatorial aspira- 
tions in 1861, had been kept somewhat in abeyance since 
the outbreak of the war, but now were in danger of burst- 
ing out again. To prevent this evil, Thurlow Weed, just 
returned from abroad, where with good effect he had 
been presenting the cause of the Union to European 
powers, now endeavored by his skill to bring about a 
temporary alliance of the Republican and the Dem- 
ocratic parties on a basis, — support of the President 
and the Constitution, and prosecution of the war, — that 
would appeal to the moderate members of each. By this 
shrewd device he hoped to dominate the radical faction 
of his own party and to silence its insistent clamor for 
Emancipation. The man who, he proposed, should re- 
ceive the joint nomination for governor from the two 
parties was John A. Dix, a War Democrat and one of the 
most distinguished citizens of the State, who had contin- 
ued in the military service from the time of his appoint- 
ment as major-general, soon after the beginning of the 
war, and who was now in command at Fortress Monroe. 
An understanding between Weed and his long-time enemy, 
Bennett, of the New York Herald, resulted in their bring- 
ing forward the scheme for discussion in the columns of 
their respective newspapers; 1 but when the Democratic 
convention met on September 10, its course in rejecting 
Dix and choosing Horatio Seymour, a vigorous partisan 
assailant of the administration, put an end to all projects 
for such a combination. 

While the course of affairs in New York was thus in- 
directly preparing the way for the nomination of Wads- 
worth, the stirring succession of military events in front 
of Washington was having the effect of causing him to 
set his face against the project. Since he had written 

1 Diary of Gideon Welles, I, 78; Brummer's Political History of New 
York State during the Civil War, p. 203. 



1862] SECOND LETTER TO SMITH 153 

his letter of August 22, Pope had been defeated at Bull 
Run, Washington had been in danger of attack, Lee with 
his victorious army had invaded Maryland. Cannon- 
ading within hearing of the Capitol had quickened Wads- 
worth's blood, and when matched against its thunder the 
call of political duties at home was far and faint. His 
eagerness to be at hand, ready for active service, together 
with the possibility of duty where his anti-slavery sym- 
pathies would have full scope, inspired the letter which 
he wrote to Smith four days before McClellan met Lee 
at Antietam. 

Washington, D. C, Sept. 13, '62. 

My Dear Smith: — 

I find myself growing quite nervous as the day for 
the gathering of our convention approaches. I sincerely 
trust that my friends or my enemies will give the nomi- 
nation some other direction. I do not like the idea of 
leaving the military service at this time, or of leaving 
the Capital. While my main duties are unimportant I 
hold a position which gives me some influence here which 
I do not like to relinquish. I should probably be suc- 
ceeded by a pro-slavery general; moreover, great changes 
have got to be made in the command of the army be- 
fore any good will come of it. While I should not antic- 
ipate or desire any very responsible position, in the event 
of these changes I might find a position where I could 
render service in the line which I prefer and which 
would carry me "down South" where Military Govern- 
orships will be plenty and of some avail. 1 I trust that 
you and my other friends who may meet at our con- 
vention will well consider the matter in this point of 
view. 

But if I am to be nominated let me have a strong, 
decided platform. If you do not I shall surely kick it 
over when I accept. I have come to think that the 

1 Wadsworth refers to the plan of appointing a military governor and three 
judges for every district occupied by the Union troops, the district to be ex- 
tended as the troops advanced till it embraced a State. A bill embodying 
this plan was reported in the Senate by the judiciary committee, in the sum- 
mer of 1862, but was not brought to a vote. — (See Schucker's Chase, p. 381.) 



154 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Rebellion can only and ought only to end in the total 
overthrow of slavery. This is a severe ordeal to pass 
through, but let us meet it like men and not leave it 
to our children, with the inheritance of debt and taxa- 
tion we are laying up for them. I have no fears of the 
"St. Domingo Massacres" which are held up to us as 
the certain results of emancipation, but it would be a 
terrible revolution to the whites of the South and the 
merchants of the North. Still, let it come now, what- 
ever it may be, and let us have an end of this infamy. 
The blacks are the most docile people on the face of the 
earth; they will make the most innocent if not the most 
industrious peasantry, and we shall recover from the 
shock sooner than we dare to hope. But cost what it 
may, I say again let us meet it now. We have paid 
for peace and freedom in the blood of our sons; let us 
have it. 

Truly yours, 

JAMES S. WADSWORTH. 

This letter, it is to be noted, was written three days 
after the nomination of Seymour by the Democrats. 
Meanwhile Weed, his first scheme having failed, had 
begun to consider Wadsworth's availability and, so 
roundabout were the ways of New York politics, pro- 
ceeded to sound him through Secretary Chase. "Long 
talk with Weed," wrote Chase in his diary of Septem- 
ber 15. "He expressed again his conviction that more 
decided measures are needed in an anti-slavery direc- 
tion, and said that there was much dissatisfaction with 
Seward in New York because he is supposed to be ad- 
verse to such measures." ' A few days later a letter from 
Hiram Barney, in New York, to Chase put Weed's posi- 
tion in a practical form. Weed was willing, it seemed, 
to make Wadsworth's nomination unanimous if it were 
"not to be considered as a triumph over him," — an expres- 
sion which might well be interpreted to mean that, in 
return for Weed's support, Wadsworth would be expected 
to yield in the matter of the platform. 

1 Report of the American Historical Association, 1902, H, 83. 



1862] NOMINATION OF WADSWORTH 155 

Barney's letter, as it happened, reached Chase on 
the morning of September 22, and before going to that 
cabinet meeting which, in Mr. Rhodes's words, is "a 
point in the history of civilization," he sent an invita- 
tion to Wadsworth to come to dinner and talk the mat- 
ter over. In the evening the secretary, having first 
made in his diary the record to which posterity chiefly 
owes its knowledge of the historic scene when Lincoln 
announced to his advisers his intention of issuing the 
proclamation of Emancipation — having made this record, 
Chase noted the outcome of the other matter upon which 
he had been engaged. His guest, it seemed, had quickly 
detected the implication in Weed's phrase. 

Wadsworth had but one objection to saying he would 
be governor, if at all, of the State and not of a section 
of a party: which was that it might be considered as in 
some sort a pledge, which he would not give to anybody. 
Told Wadsworth in confidence that the proclamation 
might be expected to-morrow morning — which surprised 
and gratified him equally. 1 

As it turned out it was Lincoln's change of attitude 
on the subject of Emancipation that determined Wads- 
worth's nomination. In the convention, meeting when 
the news of the proclamation was barely forty-eight 
hours old, the Greeley and the anti-slavery men had 
things their own way. Since to support the policy of 
Emancipation was now to support the President, they 
were in no mood to listen to the counsels of the mod- 
erates and under no necessity to bargain for their help. 
Weed, who on the failure of his overtures to Wadsworth 
had renewed his advocacy of Dix, could make no head- 
way against the cry for a leader who could rally the 
State to strengthen the hands of the President in his 
new policy. On the first ballot Wadsworth was nomi- 
nated, two hundred and thirty-four votes having gone 
1 ibid., n, 90. 



156 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

to him, while Dix received only one hundred and ten. 1 
Governor Morgan's name was not brought before the 
convention. The platform adopted was such that there 
was no danger of Wadsworth's attempting to kick it 
over. 

The nomination of Wadsworth was received with 
enthusiasm and his election regarded as certain. 2 In 
his letter of acceptance and in a speech 3 to a group of 
serenaders who came to his house, Wadsworth indicated 
in unequivocal terms his position on Emancipation and 
the prosecution of the war. Having put himself publicly 
on record, he declared that military duties prevented his 
leaving Washington to stump the State; the campaign 
must go on without help from him. 

Almost immediately, however, it became plain that 
there was to be a lively contest. Seymour and his fol- 
lowers began a series of partisan attacks on the adminis- 
tration. Emancipation was condemned as "a proposal 
for the butchery of women and children, for scenes of 
lust and rapine, and of arson and murder, which would 
invoke the interference of civilized Europe." 4 Corrupt 
contracts and arbitrary arrests were violently denounced. 3 
To these attacks Raymond, in the New York Times, and 
Greeley, in the Tribune, made vigorous reply. On both 
sides the blows were shrewd and in the heat of the strife 
personalities were soon mingled with policies as the sub- 
ject-matter of debate. Wadsworth's record as land-owner 
and soldier was vilified with abundant use of superlatives; 
the polls, it was said, was the only place where this gen- 
eral would not run well. "Prince John" Van Buren, 

1 Alexander's Political History of N. Y., Ill, 45. 

2 For Gideon Welles 's gossip concerning the nomination, see bis Diary, I, 
154, 162. 

3 See Appendices F and G. 

4 Political History of New York, II, 40. 

6 Lincoln on September 24 had issued a proclamation withdrawing the 
right of habeas corpus from all who "discouraged enlistments" or were 
guilty of any "disloyal practice" which gave "aid and comfort to the reb- 
els." — (Lincoln's Works, H, 239.) 



1862] THE STATE CAMPAIGN 157 

appearing from retirement to delight audiences with his 
wit, and to anger opponents by his misrepresentation and 
malice, did not spare the Republican-Union candidate. 
As sometimes happens when men who have been friends 
become political opponents, he forgot to fight fair, and 
ridiculed Wadsworth's military career as insignificant — 
that of a mere "militia major." Wadsworth was also 
attacked for his alleged interference with McClellan's 
plans; on the other side, Seymour was made to smart 
from repeated accusations of treason. The intensity of 
the conflict, all the sharper because the contestants stood 
at the extremes of the two parties, at last began to alarm 
Republicans and Democrats occupying the middle ground 
where, according to the proverb, the way is safest. Fear- 
ing not only defeat in the election but party disruption 
as well, some of them now urged that both candidates 
should withdraw in order that General Dix might take the 
field alone. Even those who proposed the scheme must 
have realized that there was little hope of its success; 
and when the sturdy old soldier replied that he could 
not leave his post at Fortress Monroe "to be drawn into 
any party strife," 1 they resigned themselves to party 
strife again. 

The managers of Wadsworth's campaign, perceiving 
that the party was likely to suffer from lukewarm alle- 
giance 2 as well as from active opposition, arranged for a 
mass-meeting at Cooper Institute, in New York City, 
on the evening of October 30, a few daj r s before the elec- 
tion, and put before Wadsworth with all urgency the 
need of his attendance. Heeding their importunities, he 
obtained leave from his duties in Washington and came. 
On his arrival in New York, so the story is told in the 

1 Memoirs of John A. Dix, II, 51. 

2 "The difficulty has been," so ran a letter to Wadsworth from the head- 
quarters of the State committee on November 1, " to create enthusiasm among 
our friends. They had been exhausted by the war excitement, and it took 
extraordinary effort to wake up the friends from the lethargy in which they 
all seemed buried." 



158 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Life of Thurlow Weed, he went to Weed's room at the 
Astor House. Weed said to him: '"James, for the first 
time in my life, I am not glad to see you,' adding, in 
explanation, 'you have been sent for to make an aboli- 
tion speech. You will do it, and thus throw away the 
State.'" * As the event proved, Weed spoke from the 
fulness of knowledge possessed by a ripened politician; but 
Wadsworth had passed the point where he could accept 
such guidance. A man who for the last six months had 
been devoting himself heart and soul to caring for con- 
trabands and to fighting the Fugitive Slave Law could 
fill his speech with eloquent silence on the subject of 
slavery only at the price of utter self-stultification. As 
he faced the great audience in Cooper Union, he met 
Weed's challenge in the same steady spirit that had 
moved him when he wrote to Smith: "Let us have an 
end of this infamy. . . . We have paid for peace and 
freedom in the blood of our sons; let us have it." 
Here is his "abolition speech": 2 

The man who pauses to think of himself, his affairs, 
of his family, even, when he has public duties to per- 
form and his country lies prostrate, almost in the agonies 
of dissolution, is not the man to save it. We must lay 
aside all subordinate considerations and raise ourselves 
to fix our minds upon the true magnitude of the ques- 
tion which we have to solve. We must look directly in 
the face the deadly peril which surrounds us if we would 
save the country. I tell you it is my deliberate and 
solemn conviction that here in the State of New York 
— here, more even than in the Shenandoah and in the 
valleys of Kentucky — is the battle being fought which 
is to preserve our liberties and perpetuate our country. 
[Applause.] I do not propose to enter largely into the 
consideration of many of the questions involved in this 
canvass; following the able and eloquent speaker whom 
you have just heard, who has referred to some points upon 
which I had intended to comment in terms which I could 

1 Life of Weed, II, 425. 

2 Compiled from the reports in the New York papers of October 31. 



1862] COOPER UNION SPEECH 159 

not command, I shall glance hastily at a few of the 
leading points at issue. 

You hear it charged by my opponents that our na- 
tional administration is incompetent to manage the af- 
fairs of the country in this crisis. I do not propose to 
enter into an elaborate defence of the administration. 
I am not of the administration: I am only its subor- 
dinate officer, its humble and, I trust, its faithful ser- 
vant. [Great applause.] Look, for a moment, at the 
circumstances under which this administration took up 
the reins of power. James Buchanan [murmurs of in- 
dignation] and the thieves and traitors who gathered 
around him had left the country a hopeless wreck, al- 
most in the struggle of death. Under these trying cir- 
cumstances, Abraham Lincoln [enthusiastic applause], an 
able, honest, inexperienced man, came to the aid of the 
government. I do not doubt that his warmest friends, 
and the warmest friends of his cabinet officers, will admit 
that mistakes have been committed — and considerable 
mistakes; but that they have labored faithfully and ear- 
nestly to save this country, I can myself bear witness. 
[Applause.] And I do not believe that even in this heated 
canvass any man has dared to stand up before you and 
say that Abraham Lincoln was not an honest man, trying 
to save his country. What do these gentlemen pro- 
pose? Do they intend to supersede the administration 
by a revolution? The more audacious among them have 
dared to hint it. If they dared openly to avow it they 
would be covered with infamy, and would not receive 
one in a thousand of the votes which will now be given 
by unreflecting men for their ticket. Does it need ar- 
gument to prove that if this rebellion is put down at 
all it must be done within the two years and a few 
months during which Mr. Lincoln must administer the 
government? 

What, then, can any honest patriot, whose heart 
looks alone to the preservation of his country, do to 
sustain and strengthen Abraham Lincoln? Advise him; 
admonish him, if you will — and I tell you no man re- 
ceives the plain talk of honest men, whether political 
friends or opponents, with more pleasure and more cour- 
tesy than Abraham Lincoln — admonish him, if you will, 
but strengthen and sustain him. [Applause.] Give him 



160 WADS WORTH OF GENESEO 

your lives and fortunes and sacred honor to aid his 
honest efforts to put down this rebellion, and I venture 
to promise that before the end of his term the sun will 
shine upon a land unbroken in its territorial integrity 
[applause], undiminished in its great proportions, a land 
of peace, a land of prosperity, a land where labor is 
everywhere honorable and the soil is everywhere free. 
[Great applause.] 

Mr. Lincoln has told you that he would save this 
country with slavery if he could, and he would save it 
without slavery if he could; he has never said to you 
that if he could not save slavery he would let his coun- 
try go. [Applause.] I believe that that honest patriot 
would rather be thrown into a molten furnace than 
utter a sentiment so infamous. He has said to those 
in rebellion against the United States: "I give you one 
hundred days to return to your allegiance; if you fail 
to do that, I shall strike from under you that institu- 
tion which some of you seem to think dearer than life, 
than liberty, than country, than peace." And some of 
us, let me add, appear to entertain the same opinion. 
Gentlemen, I stand by Abraham Lincoln. [Tremendous 
applause.] It is just, it is holy so to do. I ask you 
to stand by him and sustain him in his efforts. [We 
will; we will.] 

I know, for I have sometimes felt, the influence of 
the odium which the spurious aristocracy, who have so 
largely directed the destinies of this nation for three- 
quarters of a century, have attached to the word "abo- 
lition." They have treated it, 'and too often taught us 
to treat it, as some low, vulgar crime, not to be spoken of 
in good society or mentioned in fashionable parlors. I 
know there are many men still influenced by this preju- 
dice; but let those who, in this hour of peril, this struggle 
of life and death, shrink from that odium stand aside. 
The events of this hour are too big for them. They may 
escape ridicule, but they cannot escape contempt. Their 
descendants, as they read the annals of these times and 
find the names of their ancestors nowhere recorded among 
those who came to the rescue of their government in the 
hour of its greatest trial, will blush for shame. [Ap- 
plause.] 

You are told by the candidates of this anti-war 



1862] COOPER UNION SPEECH 161 

party which is springing up that they will give you 
peace in ninety days. I believe them. They will give 
you peace — but, good God, what a peace! A peace 
which breaks your country into fragments; a Mexican 
peace; a Spanish-American peace; a peace which inau- 
gurates eternal war! [Applause.] What peace can they 
give you in ninetv days or in any other time which does 
not acknowledge" the Southern Confederacy and cut 
your country in twain? Let me ask you, for a moment, 
if you ever looked at the map of your country which 
it is proposed to bring out— this new and improved 
map of Seymour, Van Buren & Co., the map of these 
" let 'em go" geographers? [Laughter.] A country three 
thousand miles long and a few hundred miles wide in 
the middle. Why, they could not make such a country 
stand until they got their map lithographed; nay, not 
even until they got it photographed. [Renewed laugh- 
ter.] All the great watercourses, all the great chan- 
nels of trade dissevered in the middle. No, the man- 
date of nature, the finger of God is against any such 
disseverance of this country. It can never be divided 
by the slave line or any other line. 

If you are not prepared to acknowledge the indepen- 
dence of the Southern Confederacy and take this peace 
which is offered to you in ninety days, what are the 
other alternatives presented to you? The South has 
unanimously declared that she will submit to no restora- 
tion of the Union, that she will under no circumstances 
come back into the Union. What, then, are we to do? 
We must either go over and join them and adopt their 
laws and their social system, or we must subjugate them 
to our laws and to our system. Abraham Lincoln tells 
you that he intends to subjugate them. Your soldiers 
in the field say that they intend to subjugate them. 
[Applause.] Sleeping to-night upon the cold ground as 
they are, to sleep to-morrow, perhaps, upon the battle- 
field, to sleep in death forever, they say: "Surrender 
never!" [Great applause.] Gentlemen, what do you 
say? Do you propose to surrender? [No, no, never!] 
What is to be the voice of New York upon this ques- 
tion? Is it to carry cheering words to those brave and 
suffering soldiers? Is it to reanimate and encourage 
them? Or is it to tell them that their State is against 



162 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

them and against their cause? And what of the gallant 
dead? What of those who have fallen in battle, or fallen 
by disease, in thousands and tens of thousands? Have 
they been sacrificed all in vain? Have they been sacri- 
ficed in an unnecessary, as Mr. Seymour would say, 
and unprofitable war? Are these the words which we 
are to carry to those hearts made desolate by this war? 
to the fathers and mothers, to the wives and children 
of the heroic dead? No, gentlemen, never! Let Mr. 
Seymour say to them, if he has the heart to say it, that 
they fell in an unnecessary war; I shall say no such 
thing. When it is my lot to meet any of them, I shall 
say: "Your kinsman fell in a glorious cause; he gave 
his life to save the life of his country in a war forced 
upon him by a selfish, savage, brutal aristocracy. All 
honor to him; all honor to his name; and may a merci- 
ful God mitigate the afflictions of those who mourn." 

I said at the commencement of my remarks that if 
we would meet this issue properly we must appreciate 
the imminence of the peril. I tell you now that here 
in New York you stand face to face with the enemy. 
Here are the minions, the instruments, the tools of that 
aristocracy to which I have referred. Here, too, are the 
agents and here, too, is the money of that other sym- 
pathetic aristocracy upon the other side of the Atlantic, 
those people who, while talking of peace and neutrality, 
have sent out armed vessels to prey upon your com- 
merce and take captive your seamen. As your soldiers 
stand upon the hills of Antietam and the plains of Ma- 
nassas, so you stand here, face to face with your enemy. 

I know, gentlemen, that on ordinary occasions there 
might be some question raised as to the expediency of 
a candidate's indulging in speculations on the result; 
but, having divested myself of all personal feeling in 
regard to this matter, I shall speak of it as I would if 
I were not a candidate. 

It is fifteen months since I have stood upon the soil 
of New York until this evening; but in that time I have 
seen as much and perhaps more of the sons of New 
York than I should if I had remained at home. I have 
seen them on the battle-field, flushed with victory; I 
have seen them dismayed with defeat; I have seen them 
sleeping on the frozen ground; I have seen them suffer- 



1862] COOPER UNION SPEECH 103 

ing and dying in the hospitals. I claim, gentlemen, to 
know as well as any man knows what race of men come 
from New York, and I tell you that they do not intend 
to give up [great applause]; they do not intend to sur- 
render; they do not intend to let their country go. 
[Applause.] You will perhaps, gentlemen, when you get 
the returns from some of the election districts near you, 
be somewhat alarmed. But wait, gentlemen, wait till you 
hear from the hills of Saint Lawrence on the north; wait 
till you hear from the hills of Allegany on the south, 
wait till you hear from the valleys of the Mohawk, Cay- 
uga, Onondaga, and Genesee; wait till you hear from 
them, gentlemen, and you will hear a voice which will 
bring joy and glad tidings to every loyal heart in this 
land, and make it cry out: "The country is saved!" 
[Renewed cheers.] 

Gentlemen, I only propose to detain you a moment 
longer. [Go on! Go on!] Let me say to you, gentle- 
men, that if we meet this great crisis in which an over- 
ruling Providence has assigned it to us to act, if we meet 
it as becomes men, if we shape our course so that we 
may appeal to the God of Justice to smile upon our arms 
and upon our councils, I tell you, gentlemen, that the 
glories of the Revolutionary period, even, will pale be- 
fore the achievements of your soldiers and your states- 
men. [Great applause.] 

I will not detain you any further, gentlemen; and 
I thank you for the great patience with which you have 
heard me. [Enthusiastic applause, the audience rising 
and waving handkerchiefs.] 

The immediate effect of the speech is described by 
Alexander in his Political History of New York: 1 

Amid a hurricane of approbation he mingled censure 
of Seymour with praise of Lincoln, and the experience 
of a brave soldier with bitter criticism of an unpatriotic 
press. It was not the work of a trained public speaker. 
It lacked poise, phrase, and deliberation. But what it 
wanted in manner it made up in fire and directness, giv- 
ing an emotional and loyal audience abundant opportu- 
nity to explode into long-continued cheering. Thoughtful 

i m,50,5i. 



164 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

men who were not in any sense political partisans gave 
careful heed to his words. He stood for achievement. 
He brought the great struggle nearer home, and men 
listened as to one with a message from the field of pa- 
triotic sacrifices. The radical newspapers broke into a 
chorus of applause. The Radicals themselves were de- 
lighted. The air rung with praises of the courage and 
spirit of their candidate, and if here and there the faint 
voice of a Conservative suggested that emancipation 
was premature and arbitrary arrests were unnecessary, 
a shout of offended patriotism drowned the ignoble 
utterance. 

One point in this speech calls for further remark. 
Its characterization of Lincoln shows how Wadsworth, 
like every other man who saw enough of the President 
to learn his ways and to find the fire of his sincerity 
steadily burning behind its baffling defences of jocular- 
ity, had outgrown and repudiated the distrust felt in 
the days of ignorance. The story of the cabinet meet- 
ing of September 22, as told by Chase to Wadsworth 
at dinner on that day, could not fail to win the lasting 
allegiance of a nature so ardent as Wadsworth's. It 
was this revelation that inspired the words: "I stand 
by Abraham Lincoln. It is just; it is holy so to do." 

To the Radicals, confident in the righteousness of 
their cause and looking so far ahead to the time of its 
ultimate consummation that their vision of immediate 
conditions was distorted, the result of the election was 
nothing short of astounding. Seymour had a majority 
of over ten thousand votes. 1 Thereupon ensued much 
discussion between the wings of the Union party as to 
the cause of the defeat, each side considering that it 
had a grievance against the other. According to H. B. 
Stanton, the anti-slavery journalist, Wadsworth believed 
that Seward was "dead against him all through the cam- 

ir The vote stood: Seymour, 307,063; Wadsworth, 296,492.— New York 
Tribune, November 24. 



1862] DEMOCRATIC VICTORY 165 

paign." 1 As for Weed, he made public announcement of 
his "steady and earnest support" 2 of the whole State 
ticket; but so high had feeling run that for some time he 
suffered, as he himself notes in his Autobiography, 3 from 
the suspicion that he had worked to defeat Wadsworth. 

But not personal and factional interests, nor dissat- 
isfaction at corrupt contracts and arbitrary arrests, nor 
the absence of the soldier vote, contributing causes 
though they were, are adequate of themselves to ac- 
count for the wiping out of the fifty thousand majority 
which Lincoln had received in New York in 1860 and 
the substitution for it of the decisive majority by which 
Seymour was elected. The view of the situation dur- 
ing the campaign which was urged by William Cullen 
Bryant upon Lincoln presents what is generally agreed 
to be the major cause of this great reversal. "The elec- 
tion of Seymour as Governor of the State of New York 
would be a public calamity, but it may happen if the 
army is kept idle. A victory or two would almost an- 
nihilate his party, and carry in General Wadsworth tri- 
umphantly." 4 In default of any such victory, the wave 
of reaction which swept New York carried also the 
States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illi- 
nois, and Wisconsin into the Democratic column. "The 
defeat of the administration party in these important 
States," says Mr. Rhodes, "which was occasioned by 
its former friends staying away from the polls, was a 
symptom of weariness of the war, a protest against the 
waste of so much life and money with so little result 
accomplished." 5 

1 Random Recollections, p. 216. 

2 Letter in the New York Tribune, November 4, 1862. 

3 Pp. 360, 361. 4 Godwin's Life of Bryant, II, 176. 

6 History of the U. S., IV, 164. "The country were tired of inaction," 
wrote Edwards Pierrepont to Wads worth on November 5, "disgusted with the 
delay, and determined that the President should hear and heed a voice which 
had not been regarded for a long time. The very things which have made 
you impatient with the President, and with imbecile, timid generals, have 
made the people impatient with the same President and determined that he 



166 WADS WORTH OF GENESEO 

If any shade of personal chagrin tinged the defeat 
for Wadsworth, it quickly cleared away. The pressure 
put upon him not only to trim his anti-slavery opinions 
to the times but also to make a heavy contribution of 
money for electioneering purposes was, he realized, but 
a slight strain for his powers of resistance compared to 
what he would be subjected to if he became governor. 
"After the election had been decided," writes his aide, 
Colonel Meneely, "General Wadsworth came to my office 
door, stood erect, and, holding his hand on his breast, 
said, 'Here is one person who thinks just as much of 
General Wadsworth after the election as he did before.' 
He had not sold himself, and he felt that, although de- 
feated for office, he was a man." 

The political campaign over, Stanton was willing 
to release Wadsworth from his duties at Washington 
and to accede to the desire which he had some time 
since expressed for active service with the Army of the 
Potomac. Although at the moment no place could be 
found for him there, Stanton on November 19 granted 
him a brief leave of absence from his duties as military 
governor. When, after a visit to his family in New 
York, he returned to Washington on December 7, his 
fate was still undecided. "I do not know what I am 
to do," he wrote to his son James, "whether remain here 
or go into the field." But Burnside, who had replaced 
McClellan, had already begun his campaign, and within 
the week the battle of Fredericksburg was fought and 
lost. In the train of that disaster came the opportunity 
for which Wadsworth had been waiting. 

should know it. I write this rather to say that you may be sure that no 
want of personal popularity or personal admiration for your course has pre- 
vented your election." 

The discussion of this campaign in Brummer's Political History of New 
York State during the Period of the Civil War, pp. 201-254, is admirable 
in every respect, and I am greatly indebted to it. 



CHAPTER VI 

IN WINTER QUARTERS. FITZHUGH'S CROSSING. 

CHANCELLORSVILLE. THE MARCH TO 

GETTYSBURG 

On the night of December 13 news reached the War 
Department of the desperate battle which Burnside had 
been waging that day. The losses had been heavy, and 
several general officers were known to have been killed. 
Wadsworth was given orders to report at once to Burn- 
side, and leaving Washington before daylight made his 
way with all speed to the front. When he reached Fred- 
ericksburg he found himself in the midst of an army 
demoralized and almost prostrated by the repulse which 
it had just suffered at Lee's hands. It still lay where 
it had stopped fighting on the south side of the Rappa- 
hannock, its only occupation the depressing labors that 
call for performance after a battle-field has taken its toll 
of dead and wounded. What revealed itself to the eye 
received its complement in the stories told by every one 
with whom Wadsworth spoke, both at Burnside's head- 
quarters, whither he went to report, and at the head- 
quarters of Reynolds, on the extreme left, where he found 
his son Craig, who had done gallant service as one of 
Reynolds's aides. The much-enduring Army of the Poto- 
mac, in changing McClellan for Burnside as commander, 
had only fared worse, and the useless sacrifice which he 
had called upon it to make in the attack on Marye's 
Heights had wiped out altogether its confidence in its 
new commander. 

Since at the moment there was no need of Wads- 
worth's services — for the promotions and readjustments 

107 



168 WADS WORTH OF GENESEO 

that follow a battle had not yet made a place for him — 
he returned to Washington to give his testimony before 
the McDowell court of inquiry. 1 In a few days he was 
back with the army again, and on December 22 was 
published his assignment to command the First Division 
of the First Corps. 2 His aides-de-camp were Major Clin- 
ton H. Meneely and Captain T. E. Ellsworth. 

The officers and men with whom Wadsworth was to 
share the service of the next six and a half months — a 
period which included the battles of Chancellorsville and 
Gettysburg and the long march from one field to the 
other — require description here, for his life now became 
a part of theirs. The officer whom he succeeded was 
Brigadier-General Doubleday, who, as captain in the 
regular army, had at Sumter fired the first gun that re- 
plied to the Confederates. A capable commander, cool 
and brave in battle, he was not in good favor with all 
his brother officers, partly because of his anti-slavery 
sympathies, partly for the length to which he carried 
his habit of outspoken criticism. He presently received 
the command of the Third Division of the First Corps, 
taking the place of Meade, promoted to the command 
of the Fifth Corps. The Second Division was led by 
Brigadier-General John C. Robinson, a brave and re- 
liable soldier. 

The corps commander, Major-General John Fulton 
Reynolds, was one whose qualities both as a man and 
a soldier were then and are still spoken of in terms of 
praise that carry with them no phrases of depreciation 
or disparagement. Fortunate as his career had already 
been, with its brilliant record on hard-fought fields, the 
future at the time seemed still brighter. Rated among 
the "most distinguished and best-beloved officers" of 
the Army of the Potomac, he was also, in Swinton's 
words, "one whom, by the steady growth of the highest 

1 His testimony is found in W. R., XII, pt. 1, pp. 112-115. 

2 W. R., XXV., 876. 



1863] WADSWORTH AND HIS STAFF 169 

military qualities, the general voice of the whole army 
had marked out for the largest fame." J Though Reyn- 
olds was thirteen years younger than Wadsworth, there 
was much in their natures, besides their readiness to 
fight, which drew them together, and to an unusual de- 
gree Wadsworth shared his commander's confidence and 
regard. 

With the members of his staff Wadsworth's intimacy 
was much more than that of mere forced fellowship. 
They were young men of the same age as his son Craig, 
or even younger, and to them, as to his own sons, he 
knew how to be both father and companion. The warmth 
and tenderness with which such of them as still survive 
cherish the memory of those days bears witness to the 
truth that nothing so quickly and yet so permanently 
impresses youth as the example of a noble nature thus 
lived with from day to day. In a world the moral tone 
of which was constantly threatened by intrigue, jealousy, 
and all the diversions that crowd into idle hours, these 
youths had the ever-present inspiration of a man who 
never thought of himself, because his mind was filled 
with the thought of duty, and whose sole purpose in the 
performance of duty was "to alway spend and never 
spare." 

The friendly feeling for Wadsworth which was a mat- 
ter of course on the part of officers and men in the vari- 
ous regiments established itself the more quickly since 
one of the four brigades in the division was that which 
he had commanded the winter before at Upton's Hill. 
His welcome from them was probably not so turbulent 
and overpowering as that which the men had given him 
on the Sunday in the preceding April when he had ridden 
out from Washington to visit them, but it nevertheless 
bespoke regard and confidence. The regiments com- 
posing the brigade, however, were soon transferred to 
the provost-marshal general's command and their places 

1 Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, p. 330. 



170 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

taken by four New Jersey regiments and one Pennsyl- 
vania regiment — all nine months' men whose term of ser- 
vice was to end in June. In still another brigade, where 
three of the four regiments were composed of two years' 
men from New York, the worth of his troops was weak- 
ened by the fact that the day of their muster-out was 
but a few months away. 

The other two brigades of Wadsworth's division were 
organizations which any soldier would be proud to com- 
mand. They had seen and were destined to see as hard 
fighting as any soldiers in the Army of the Potomac; 
their fame has matched their great losses in killed and 
wounded. They were three years' men who had filled 
the ranks at the call not of bounties but of patriotism. 
Six of the eleven regiments in the two brigades, it is 
worth noting, were from the States of Indiana, Michigan, 
and Wisconsin. 

One of these brigades, consisting entirely of Western 
regiments — Nineteenth Indiana, Twenty-fourth Michi- 
gan, Second, Sixth, and Seventh Wisconsin — was known 
throughout the army as the Iron Brigade, a name which 
it had won from its gallant work in storming the Con- 
federate position at South Mountain. The black slouch 
hats which its men wore made it easily distinguishable. 
Among its regimental officers was an unusual number of 
men of the highest type of volunteer soldier. Three of 
the colonels were Henry A. Morrow, Lucius Fairchild, 
and E. S. Bragg; the lieutenant-colonel of the Sixth 
Wisconsin, who still lacked a few days of being twenty- 
five when he commanded the regiment at Gettysburg, 
was Rufus A. Dawes. His Service with the Sixth Wis- 
consin Volunteers, composed largely of letters written to 
"family, friends, and M. B. G. (my best girl)," is dis- 
tinguished among books of its class for the completeness 
of the picture which it gives of the life of a soldier and 
his regiment and of their relation to the world within 
and without the army. The brigade commander was 



1863] WADSWORTH'S BRIGADES 171 

Solomon Meredith, a Hoosier politician. His visits to 
Washington took him to the White House and obtained pro- 
motion for him as the only Quaker general in the army. 1 

The other brigade consisted of the Seventh Indiana, 
the Seventy-sixth and the Ninety-fifth New York, and 
the Fifty-sixth Pennsylvania, to which during the spring 
were added the One Hundred and Forty-seventh New 
York, a new regiment, and the Eighty-fourth New York, 
commonly known by its militia designation of Four- 
teenth Brooklyn. Here, too, were devoted officers and 
brave men; but the figure that most deserves notice is 
that of the brigade commander, Lysander Cutler. Fully 
as old as Wadsworth, with hair and beard nearly white, 
spare of frame and limping from a wound received at 
Gainesville, severe in aspect, yet with a kindly look in 
his keen eyes, quick and nervous, he was a conscientious 
officer and an indomitable fighter. 

Another noteworthy figure was Lieutenant James 
Stewart, a broad-shouldered Scotchman, commanding the 
battery of regulars (Battery B, Fourth U. S. Artillery) 
attached to the division. He had entered the battery 
as a private ten years before the war began and by 
reason of this long service understood how to produce 
effective discipline by the right attitude of comradeship. 
His men, mostly detached volunteers from the two in- 
fantry brigades, responded heartily to such training as 
his, and the battery won a high name for its wonderful 
fighting qualities. 2 

The position to which the First Corps was assigned 
for the winter was on the extreme left of the army, at 
Belle Plain, on Potomac Creek, a short distance above 
the place where it empties into the Potomac. A few 

1 After the war Morrow became colonel of the 21st Regiment, U. S. In- 
fantry; Fairchild was Governor of Wisconsin and minister to Spain; Bragg 
served three terms in Congress, was minister to Mexico, and consul-general 
at Havana and Hong-Kong; Dawes served in Congress. 

2 In The Cannoneer, by A. L. Buell, is told the story of this battery, with 
much interesting detail as to the personality of its commander. 



172 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

miles up the river was Aquia Creek, the landing-place at 
which the supplies for the army were transferred from 
boats to the military railroad running to Falmouth. At 
Belle Plain, too, a desolate region with not a house in 
sight, were supply depots, but here the transportation 
was wholly by wagons. Back from the landing lay a 
range of hills, their sides covered with a growth of scrub 
oak and pine and cut by deep ravines, up which, on has- 
tily constructed roads, struggled the long trains. The 
Virginia mud, the object of much eloquently descriptive 
language both then and since, exercised upon the heavy 
loads all its powers of suction, and frequently a wagon 
was overturned. Characteristically, one of Wadsworth's 
first labors was to improve the condition of these thor- 
oughfares — if the term be not altogether a misnomer — 
for he had no mind that any portion of the army depend- 
ent on supplies from Belle Plain should suffer delay or 
deprivation. With logs cut from the trees on the hill- 
sides he "corduroyed," the roads, employing himself so 
unremittingly in the work that he presently came to be 
known as "Old Corduroy." When, in spite of his care, 
it was found that "the sharp-hoofed mules would go 
down in the mud and mire," Wadsworth obtained a supply 
of oxen, keeping them near his head-quarters. "It was 
a rare treat to our men," writes Dawes, "to see the old 
general take a gad and 'whisper to the calves.' He 
took great interest in the oxen, and was often seen at 
the landing giving instructions in driving them." x The 
wonder here expressed conveys not only the astonish- 
ment of the soldiers at, so to say, scratching a brigadier 
and finding a farmer, but also their sense of the con- 
trast between Wadsworth and numerous other officers 
at a period when, according to the latest historian of 
the campaign of Chancellorsville, "many regimental com- 
manders took little interest in the welfare of their men." 2 

1 Service with the 6th Wisconsin, p. 129. 

2 The Campaign of Chancellorsville, by J. Bigelow, Jr., p. 34. 



1863] FORAGING EXPEDITIONS 173 

Even after all these labors the roads fell short of the 
service required of them. This restriction in the trans- 
portation of supplies affected first the animals of the 
army, of which the number was unusually large, for at 
this time Hooker, who had succeeded Burnside in com- 
mand, was making his unfortunate experiment of sub- 
stituting pack-mules for wagons. To supply the defi- 
ciency in forage, Wadsworth, reviving his practice at 
Upton's Hill, sent out twice in February and twice in 
March expeditions to the Northern Neck, as the region 
to the south lying between the Potomac and the Rappa- 
hannock Rivers is called. A similar expedition of cav- 
alry, in which Craig participated, is referred to in the 
following letter written by Wadsworth on March 9 to 
his sixteen-year-old son James. Incidentally, the letter 
shows the writer's rugged health and his intention that 
his youngest son should join him in the army: 

I rode day before yesterday forty odd miles and 
yesterday sixteen. Craig has just returned from an ex- 
pedition down the Neck. ... He went down to Coan 
River in a boat with 80 cavalry and returned by land— 
80 miles the way he came. He destroyed several boats 
the Rebels were using to take supplies over the Rappa- 
hannock, took several prisoners engaged in this business, 
some signal officers, and a considerable amount of army 
supplies. 1 I sent two infantry parties in the same direc- 
tion, which were quite successful. 

It is my present intention to have you with me 
early next fall in the army. I am afraid to have you 
come into this country in the summer— at your age you 

1 Craig Wadsworth's report of the expedition in which he took part is 
given in 39 W R., p. 14. On one of these expeditions, or some similar one, 
Craig, accompanied by a few soldiers, had entered a mill in search of flour. 
While they were in the loft a small group of Confederate horsemen rode 
up hitched their horses, and came into the mill on a similar errand, lhe 
Yankees made a hasty exit by sliding down the pulley-rope that hung m 
front of the loft door, and, as their own horses had been tied on the other 
side of the mill, rode off on the horses of the rebels. In one of the saddle- 
bags Craig found a letter which had been written to him by one of his sisters 
and which had suffered capture, with other letters, at the hands of some en- 
terprising Confederate cavalryman. 



174 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

would be almost sure to have the fever. If I were in a 
healthy region I would take you as soon as the summer 
vacation commenced. . . . 

As the winter wore away the effects of Hooker's 
labors of organization began to appear. The equipment 
of the army was improved in every way possible, and 
if the pack-mules had not yet shown how bad their 
worst could be in the way of straying and rolling, at 
least they were faster than wagons; the absentees had 
returned to increase the ranks of their regiments — though 
not indeed to fill them — and all were eager to enter 
upon the campaign which must begin as soon as the 
roads became less miry. Across the Rappahannock lay 
the enemy. His front at Fredericksburg was impreg- 
nable; the question was: would Hooker move up or 
down the river to assail him on the flank? 

The arrival of the circular of April 13 from head- 
quarters was the first sign that operations were about 
to begin. The scale of the movement proposed might be 
guessed from the fact that each soldier was required to 
carry in knapsack and haversack field rations for eight 
days. Heretofore three days' rations had been his usual 
load, though at times he had carried five. As Wads- 
worth read this order, his question was not as to the 
destination of his men, but whether, with this extraor- 
dinary burden, in addition to clothing, blanket, canteen, 
ammunition, and musket, they could possibly compass 
a march of any length. On this point he would not be 
satisfied till he had made the experiment on his own 
person. The historian of the Seventy-sixth New York 
regiment tells the story of his test as follows: 

"Orderly!" said the general, "pack a knapsack, can- 
teen, haversack, and cartridge-box, and roll the tent and 
overcoat and place them upon the knapsack, according 
to orders, and put the whole rig on me and hand me a 
gun. I am going to see if this order can be obeyed by 



1863] DECEIVING LEE 175 

the men"; and for nearly an hour the general paced his 
tent carrying the load of a soldier. At the end of that 
time, perspiring at every pore, he commenced unloading, 
declaring as he did so: "No man can carry such a load 
and live; it is preposterous!" He was obliged to pro- 
mulgate the order, but to the general's credit be it said, 
no inspector came around to see that the order was 
obeyed. 1 

Heavy rains prevented the beginning of the move- 
ment; yet Hooker's readiness to march at the first op- 
portunity was plain from an order dated April 20 which 
called for a "spirited regiment" from the First Corps 
to go down the river some twenty miles and then to 
cross and capture a small body of Confederates said to 
be stationed at Port Royal. The object of this demon- 
stration, for which the Twenty -fourth Michigan and the 
Fourteenth Brooklyn were designated, was to induce 
Lee to believe that Hooker's main attack was to be 
made from that quarter. Already fires had been built 
at night within view of the same place by troops from 
Doubleday's division, which had gone thither for that 
purpose. After a day's marching in continuous rain, 
over roads almost impassable, Wadsworth's regiments 
returned. They had destroyed a wagon train and capt- 
ured a few prisoners; 2 whether or not they had deceived 
Lee is an open question. 

At last the rain was over and gone, and under the 
influence of a warm sun and a brisk wind the roads began 
to dry rapidly. Expectation was at high pitch. On Mon- 

1 History of the 76th Regiment N. Y. Vols., p. 255. The total weight 
carried by each soldier as estimated by the chief quartermaster of the army 
was forty-five pounds (40 VV. R., p. 545); as estimated by the quarter- 
master of the First Corps, forty pounds, exclusive of musket, which was 
nine pounds (40 W. R., p. 547). Swinton calls it sixty pounds (Campaigns 
of the Army of the Potomac, p. 273). Wadsworth's brigade of nine montlis' 
New Jersey men proved unequal to the burden, throwing away about half 
their knapsacks and also a considerable number of overcoats, haversacks, and 
canteens (40 W. R., p. 547). In making his report of the campaign (39 W. R., 
p. 261), Wadsworth entered a protest at the excessive weight of the load. 

2 39 W. R., 137. 



176 WADS WORTH OF GENESEO 

day, April 27, four of the army corps began the grand 
turning movement up the river; on Tuesday morning 
the First Corps made ready for its march, which was to 
bring it to the banks of the Rappahannock, opposite a 
spot a few miles below Fredericksburg. 

But at the very moment of starting a smouldering 
difficulty in a regiment of one of Wadsworth's brigades 
burst into flame as open mutiny. There were at the 
time in the Army of the Potomac sixteen thousand 
four hundred and eighty men 1 who had enlisted at the 
beginning of the war for two years. As has been said, 
their term of service was about to expire, but whereas 
the men contended that the date of its expiration should 
be determined by that of their acceptance by their re- 
spective States, the adjutant-general's office at Washing- 
ton had ruled that the period of two years must count 
from the time of their muster in as United States vol- 
unteers. It so happened that the day had passed on 
which, according to the soldiers' reckoning, their service 
was over, while the day which the Federal government 
recognized lay beyond the gulf of battle. The patriotism 
of a few companies of one of the New York regiments 
in Wadsworth's First Brigade proved unequal to this 
strain; on being given the order to march they refused 
to move. 

When the news that the apprehended trouble had 
come to a head was brought to Wadsworth, he sent on 
his command, except the Iron Brigade, after the other 
divisions of the First Corps. As soon as they were well 
out of sight he ordered the Iron Brigade to march to the 
camp of the mutinous companies and, halting in front of 
it, to load and come to "ready." "The forlorn little 
band," so the incident is recalled by Earl M. Rogers, 
then in command of Company I, Sixth Wisconsin, 2 "that 
had done good work, and left many on the field of battle, 

1 40 W. R., p. 243. There were also 6,421 nine months' men. 

2 MS. narrative. 



1863] MUTINY 177 

then saw their error. General Wadsworth then rode in 
front of them, uncovering his head, and in a loud voice 
said, 'Men of New York, of good deeds, I give you the 
alternative. New York is ashamed of your conduct; I 
am astonished. Take two steps to the front as your 
willingness to obey the command to march; unless you 
do, by the Almighty, I will bury you here.' He gave 
the command and every man marched, ashamed of him- 
self. The Iron Brigade recovered arms, the band played 
'Johnny Comes Marching Home,' and the little affair 
was over, and the army, other than Cutler's brigade, 1 
no wiser. When Wadsworth rode past, the boys of Cut- 
ler's brigade cheered him vociferously, and carried their 
hats on their bayonets in further honor for his vigorous 
putting down of the little rebellion." Within twenty- 
four hours he was to win their admiration in an even 
higher degree. 

The movement which Wadsworth's division had be- 
gun was a part of the comprehensive and masterly strat- 
egy which preceded the battle of Chancellorsville and 
for which Hooker's severest critics have not stinted 
their praise. To deceive Lee as to his real intention to 
cross the Rappahannock by its upper fords, Hooker 
planned to have pontoon bridges thrown across the 
river at two points below Fredericksburg, and over these 
bridges troops were to be sent to make a demonstra- 
tion against Lee's right flank. For this purpose three 
corps under the command of Major-General Sedgwick 
were designated. It was apparently Hooker's expectation 
that Lee, forced to abandon Fredericksburg, would re- 
treat toward Richmond, whereupon both wings of the 
Union army were to start in pursuit. If, however, the 
Confederate commander were so rash as to fight, he 
would be hopelessly crushed between them. In either 
case success was assured, and Herman Haupt was in 
waiting on the north bank of the Rappahannock with 

1 The Iron Brigade had formerly been commanded by Cutler. 



178 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

all the materials for rebuilding the railroad toward Rich- 
mond in the rear of the advancing army. 

To make the crossing at Pollock's Mill Creek, or 
Fitzhugh's Crossing, about three miles below Fredericks- 
burg, where the lower pair of bridges was to be laid, 
Wadsworth's division was chosen. The peril of the en- 
terprise came from the rifle-pits with which the high 
south bank of the stream was lined and from which 
Confederate sharp-shooters and infantry could pour de- 
structive fire on whoever came down to the opposite 
margin of the river, which was here less than two hun- 
dred yards wide. In the preceding December, before 
the battle of Fredericksburg, the efforts of the engineer 
brigade to bridge the stream had been frustrated and 
matters had remained at a stand-still until the colonel 
of the Seventh Michigan offered his regiment to cross 
the river in the pontoon boats, make a charge up the 
bank, and drive the enemy out of his defences. The 
operation so brilliantly successful then was to be at- 
tempted now with this difference, that the attacking 
party was to be thrown over just before dawn in the 
hope of taking the enemy by surprise. 

The pontoon train which had been put under Wads- 
worth's charge he found assembled at a point some dis- 
tance back from the river. In order that there might 
be no rumble of heavy wagons or uplifted voices of 
mules and darkies to alarm the enemy, he was directed 
to assign seventy-two men to carry each of the forty- 
four pontoons (the weight of each being one thousand 
five hundred pounds), and to detail crossing squads of 
sixty men which were to march each beside its boat. 
By this arrangement the boats would receive their sev- 
eral loads as soon as they were put into the water. 

To move without noise some three thousand one 
hundred men, with their heavy burdens, over uneven 
roads for a distance of three-quarters of a mile in the 
darkness of a drizzly night was a feat the successful 



1863] FITZHUGH'S CROSSING 179 

performance of which might well rival the silent up- 
building of Solomon's temple. Nevertheless, according 
to orders the first five pontoons were lifted from the 
wagons, raised breast high on timbers, and started toward 
the river. "For some time," writes an officer in one of the 
regiments assigned to the work, "the march was continued 
in silence, as had been intended from the first, but as 
the long minutes wore on, with no signs of shore apparent, 
the burden of carriage became too great for the soldiers' 
strength. Obliged by the compulsion of fatigue to stop 
sometimes for rest, the intervals of marching forward 
became shorter, and voices had to be used to prevent 
irregularity in lowering the boats as well as to halt those 
in the rear of a group too tired to proceed farther. . . . 
Finally the officers had to take hold with the men. . . . 
It seemed as though the river was withdrawing from us 
and could never be reached. The damp meadows over 
which we were groping our way became as mortar under 
our feet. Man after man dropped to the ground unable 
to sustain the work. Morning was coming on apace, and 
still no sign of the Rappahannock. The babbling of many 
tongues swelled up from the ranks, and from the distant 
hills came the sound of cock-crowing, the precursor of 
breaking day." 1 

As Wadsworth followed the struggles of his men he 
became convinced that the chance for a surprise had al- 
ready been lost and that if this method were continued 
it would be long after daybreak before the forty-four 
pontoons could be assembled at the shore. Taking things 
into his own hands, he ordered the five pontoons to be 
reloaded on the trucks and the entire train to proceed 
to the river. At dawn twenty of the boats were in the 
water, and in the morning mist that hung over the river 
there was reason for hope that the remainder could be 

1 Among the Pontoons at Fitzhugh's Crossing, by Theron W. Haight. 
War Papers Read before the Commandery of the State of Wisconsin, Mili- 
tary Order of the Loyal Legion of the U. S., I, 419, 420. 



180 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

brought down in safety. Suddenly a volley of musketry 
from the opposite bank crashed through the fog. "A 
panic ensued in the pontoon train," writes Dawes. 
"There was a grand skedaddle of mules with lumbering 
pontoon boats, negroes, and extra-duty men. We cleared 
the track and let them go by us in their frantic and ludi- 
crous flight. We had completely failed to surprise the 
enemy." 1 

For some hours things were at a deadlock. Neither 
Wadsworth nor Reynolds was willing to send men hud- 
dled together in boats against a force of unknown mag- 
nitude hidden behind a screen of fog. Artillery was 
brought into position, infantry posted in sheltered places 
on the edge of the bank above the shore; the men got 
breakfast. 

This period of waiting was broken in upon by the arri- 
val of the commander of the engineer brigade, Brigadier- 
General H. W. Benham. Though the other bridges at 
Franklin's Crossing, a mile and a half up the river, had 
at last been laid, the misunderstandings and delays at- 
tending the work had wrought his naturally excitable 
temper to its highest pitch. Here at Fitzhugh's Cross- 
ing, when he learned how Wadsworth had seen fit to 
countermand his orders and when he saw the boats lying 
empty on the shore with no troops at hand, he would 
doubtless have ordered Wadsworth under arrest as he 
had already ordered the brigade commander at Frank- 
lin's Crossing. Fortunately— that is, for Benham — signs 
that the fog was beginning to lift speedily engaged the 
thoughts of all those responsible in planning for imme- 
diate action. 

When at about half-past eight the curtain was with- 
drawn from before the Confederate side of the river, 
the rifle-pit from which the firing had come was seen to 
be directly opposite the point where the boats lay. Skir- 
mishers were stretched along the bluff up and down 

1 Service with the 6th Wisconsin, p. 135. 



1863] FITZHUGH'S CROSSING 181 

stream, and the total number of the enemy appeared 
to be four or five hundred. 1 The steep bank was ob- 
structed not only with underbrush but with an abatis 
of trees placed with their tops extending down the slope. 
Reynolds ordered Wadsworth to force the crossing at 
once, and Wadsworth communicated the order to the 
two regiments of the Iron Brigade chosen for the un- 
dertaking—the Sixth Wisconsin and the Twenty-fourth 
Michigan. While their colonels were giving the men ex- 
plicit instructions, the artillery on the higher ground be- 
hind them began a "slow, deliberate, and well-sustained 
fire of great accuracy." 2 It checked and dispersed a 
regiment coming to reinforce the Confederates on the 
river bank and ultimately compelled the latter to take 
refuge by lying prostrate behind their defences. 

Encouraging though the support of the batteries was, 
the Michigan and Wisconsin men had a daunting task 
before them. They had watched the shooting down of 
their comrades who were unloading the boats, had seen 
the pell-mell of confusion when the teams were stam- 
peded, and now, as they fixed bayonets and threw their 
belongings into company piles, they called out: "Here's 
for Libby," 3 "Farewell, mother," "Good-by, my lover, 
good-by," and other grim vocatives of the soldier's vo- 
cabulary. "As the troops were going to the river at the 
double quick," writes General Kress, "Generals Reyn- 
olds and Wadsworth, with staff officers and orderlies, rode 
down behind the lines. I joined them, and as we were 
under a heavy fire of artillery and small-arms, I looked 
around to see how it affected my friends. The most un- 
concerned of the whole party appeared to be the two 
generals, who energetically smoked their cigars and main- 
tained a calm exterior." 4 

"By the right of companies, to the front, double 
quick, march!" At Colonel Bragg's command the Sixth 

1 39 W. R., p. 258. 2 General Hunt's report, 39 W. R., p. 247. 

8 Libby Prison. 4 Unidentified newspaper article. 



182 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Wisconsin dashed to the boats, filled them, and pushed 
out into the stream. Craig Wadsvvorth was in one of 
the first. Poles and even the butts of muskets helped 
the oars in speeding them over the short space of water. 
The Twenty-fourth Michigan, embarking farther down, 
was behind them only a moment, if at all. As soon as 
they were off, some companies of the Second Wisconsin, 
which had been moved down to the shore to assist in cov- 
ering the crossing of the first regiments, scrambled into 
I he remaining boats. "When the last boat was launched 
and filled by the infantry," writes one of the men who 
crossed in it, "and the engineers, who acted as oarsmen, 
were about to move off, the general [Wadsworth] cried 
out, 'Hold on,' stepped to his horse, threw the lines over 
his head, and sprang into the stern of the boat, holding 
the lines in his hand. The horse was decidedly opposed 
to taking a bath so early in the morning, but the general 
said to me, 'Push him in, lieutenant,' and, some of my 
company standing near by, I said to them, 'Push him 
in, boys,' and with a strong push, a long push, and a 
push-all-together, the horse was forced into the stream. 
The infantrymen were ordered before they went 'aboard' 
to lie down and were occupying this position, while Gen- 
eral Wadsworth stood erect in the stern of the boat, the 
horse swimming behind. ... It is not strange that I 
should make the remark at the time to some of the 
men standing near me: 'General Wadsworth will never 
see the end of this war — he is too brave a man — he'll 
be killed before it closes.' " l 

At first a sharp fire assailed the fleet, but it dwindled 
as the boats drew near the shore; the two leading regi- 
ments, landing one below and one above the rifle-pit, 
rushed up the bank, went at the works with a cheer, 
and over them in triumph. As Wadsworth's boat touched 
the shore, the soldiers, seizing bridle, saddle, and stir- 
rups, dragged the horse to land; animal and rider were 

1 Captain John T. Davidson, in the Elmira Telegram, August '24, 1890. 



18G3] FITZHUGH'S CROSSING 183 

up the bank in an instant. Reaching the level of the 
plain, Wadsworth with exultation beheld it occupied by 
none except retreating enemy, and his own men in full 
possession of the rifle-pit. They had captured nearly a 
hundred prisoners. He rode his dripping horse up to the 
commander of the Sixth Wisconsin, calling out: "Colonel 
Bragg, I thank you and your regiment for this gallant 
charge in pontoons." 1 The whole affair had taken barely 
ten minutes. 

Another trip of the boats sufficed to bring over the 
other regiments of the Iron Brigade, and then nothing 
prevented the rapid construction of the bridges. They 
were completed by noon, and Wadsworth's entire divi- 
sion of eight thousand men was presently in position 
on the south side of the river, his lines extending down 
to Massaponax Creek and up to connect with the divi- 
sion (Brooks's) of the Sixth Corps that had come over 
by the bridges at Franklin's Crossing. The Confeder- 
ates, meanwhile, except for an occasional shell, made 
no further opposition, and all day the two armies re- 
mained watching each other, their picket fines not more 
than fifty yards apart. 

During these hours there was opportunity to bury 
the men killed in the morning's engagement at the rifle- 
pit — a few Confederates, of Union soldiers a consider- 
ably larger number. "One of our sergeants," writes 
Colonel Meneely in this connection, "came to the gen- 
eral with a letter which he had taken from the body 
of a Georgia soldier. This letter was directed to the 
soldier's wife and contained a ten-dollar bill of Northern 
money. The letter said: 'My dear Wife, — I am going 
into battle very soon. I send all of the money that I 
have for you and the children. God knows that I wish 
I had more.' Here the letter stopped in a way showing 
that the writer intended adding to it. The general took 
the letter, turned his horse as if to hide his action, 

1 MS. narrative of Earl M. Rogers. 



184 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

placed two additional ten-dollar bills in the letter, and 
sealed it. Then he said: 'Poor woman. She has done 
no harm and will feel badly enough.' The letter was 
handed to our provost-marshal with instructions to see 
that it was sent across the line by the first flag of truce." 
It is not always the inhumanities of war that stir us 
most profoundly. 

That night Wadsworth's men lay on their arms. On 
Thursday morning, April 30, in expectation of a for- 
ward movement on the part of the Confederates, they 
fell to work perfecting their intrenchments, using freely 
for this purpose farming implements and timber from 
barns. When, early in the afternoon, the enemy was 
seen to be forming in column of attack and threatening 
the bridge-heads, Wadsworth's line was further strength- 
ened by two batteries sent over in haste by Reynolds. 
Nothing came of the threatened movement, however, 
and the Confederates confined their activity to shelling, 
damaging the bridges somewhat and annoying Robin- 
son's division across the river. With the coming of dark 
Wadsworth ordered work on the intrenchments to be 
resumed; as the men toiled through the night they were 
surprised to find themselves visited by him and were 
cheered with the assurance of his unsleeping care. By 
morning breastworks firm enough to resist solid shot and 
shell protected the brigades, and Wadsworth was justi- 
fied in sending word to General Butterfield, Hooker's 
chief of staff at Falmouth, that his troops were in good 
spirits and his position a strong one. 1 

For the success of Hooker's movement it was highly 
important that he should know whether Lee, suspecting 
his design, had begun to transfer troops from Fredericks- 
burg to front him at Chancellorsville and whether Long- 
street, who, with two divisions of his corps, had been 
south of the James, was returning to take part in the 
battle. Yet at the critical moment the means that 
1 40 W. R., p. 333. 



1863] FITZHUGH'S CROSSING 185 

should have been available for this purpose proved of 
little service. In this fact lies the explanation of the 
disappointing inactivity of the left wing of Hooker's 
army at the beginning of the battle. In the first place, 
being without cavalry, Sedgwick could make no attempt 
at finding out whether or not the movement of trains 
on the railroad from Richmond signified the arrival of 
Longstreet. 1 In the second place, the river fog, as thick 
on the morning of Friday, May 1, as it had been two 
days before when Wadsworth had crossed, rendered of no 
use the balloons and signal stations upon which Hooker 
depended in lieu of cavalry. Finally, Sedgwick realized 
that he was in danger of being added to the list of gen- 
erals on whom Stonewall Jackson had practised success- 
fully his arts of mystification. In the early hours of 
this Friday morning a deserter had appeared at Wads- 
worth's picket line. When brought in and questioned 
he gave information that Jackson's whole corps was still 
opposite Franklin's Crossing and that Longstreet, with 
two divisions of his corps, was on the way to rejoin Lee. 
Wadsworth hurried the man to Reynolds, who hurried 
him to Butterfield, who at 5.30 a. m. sent the news to 
Hooker. 2 The first glimpses caught by the signal sta- 
tions and the balloons at Falmouth through the dispers- 

1 During the forenoon of the day on which Wadsworth and Brooks had 
crossed, Lee had learned of the other force crossing at Kelly's Ford, far 
beyond his left. This fact and the continued inactivity of Wadsworth's and 
Brooks's men made him suspect that the movement below Fredericksburg 
was merely a feint. — (Lee's report, 39 \V. R., p. 796.) On that day, therefore, 
he did no more than assemble Jackson's divisions opposite Sedgwick and 
Reynolds. The various movements among these troops watched by Wads- 
worth on the next day were ordered with deliberate intent to cause the 
Federals just such bewilderment as appears in the following despatch of 
Reynolds to Butterfield: "Their position and formation threaten our bridge- 
heads. This is either bravado, in order to get up troops from Richmond, or 
they are really in force. They have never shown their troops in this way 
before. It may be that the artillery is simply horses arranged to look like 
teams. I cannot see the guns. Wagons have just been seen moving up on 
the other side of the Massaponax, and a train of passenger cars just gone 
down the road toward Bowling Green." — (40 W. R., p. 313.) 

2 40 W. R., pp. 322, 336. 



186 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

ing mist seemed to reveal no diminution of the force 
opposite; but considerably later in the morning the bal- 
loons reported heavy columns of gray marching in the 
direction of Chancellorsville. The explanation given by 
the first deserter, repeated by two other deserters — "one 
of them quite an intelligent man," 1 thanks again without 
doubt to Jackson — kept bewilderment alive in the Fed- 
eral officers. Was it Jackson or Longstreet who was 
going to Lee's aid ? 

Thus, all through May 1, Sedgwick, though his 
thirty-eight thousand men were opposed by only ten 
thousand Confederates at Fredericksburg, the remainder 
having joined Lee at Chancellorsville, made no attempt 
by a vigorous attack to help Hooker in the fight which 
he was waging twelve miles away. If, according to 
general expectation, the enemy had retreated, Sedgwick 
knew his part; but since the Confederate force stood 
firm, in a strong position, with apparently undiminished 
numbers, he felt bound to depend upon instructions from 
his distant commander. Unfortunately, the recently in- 
stalled field telegraph service on which he relied worked 
badly, and he and Reynolds, left in the dark, puzzled 
themselves with hypotheses as to the situation at Fred- 
ericksburg and at Chancellorsville. Early in the after- 
noon, in the hope of getting some light on the state of 
things opposite them by forcing the enemy to expose 
his line of battle, Reynolds ordered Wadsworth to make 
a demonstration, but so advantageous was the Con- 
federate position for concealing troops that Wadsworth 
could report merely that the enemy got under arms in 
two lines of battle and seemed in the same strength and 
position that he had been in when they threatened him 
the day before. 2 Later the intermittent telegraph brought 
a message that Hooker had suspended his attack, with 
directions to Sedgwick to keep a sharp lookout and to 

1 Butterfield's report to Hooker.— (40 W. R, p. 332.) 

2 40 W. R., p. 341. 



1863] FITZHUGH'S CROSSING 187 

attack if he saw a chance of success. 1 Finally, at 5.30 
an order for a brisk demonstration came from Hooker, 
having been delayed six hours in transmission. 2 Again 
Wadsworth made his preparations to advance, but the 
time for such a movement had plainly gone by, and pres- 
ently the order was countermanded. 

After three days of a situation in which men of Wads- 
worth's temper were 

"... like greyhounds in the slips 
Straining upon the start," 

it was a relief, on the morning of Saturday, May 2, to 
receive orders to march with the rest of the First Corps 
to Chancellorsville, where Hooker, impressed by the 
vigor of Lee's attack and the stories of Longstreet's 
arrival, had withdrawn to his intrenchments and was 
preparing to assume the defensive. In the case of this 
order, however, the telegraph, as on the day before, 
had done its worst; instead of being able, according to 
Hooker's intention, to recross the river under cover of 
darkness, Wadsworth must now get his men over in full 
view of the enemy. The operation was all the more 
difficult because one of the bridges had been removed 
on Thursday night and because the enemy's batteries 
had acquired perfect range of the single bridge which 
remained. 

The first regiments of his Third Brigade, which had 
been lying in the rear close to the river, Wadsworth 
succeeded in getting over without exciting the enemy's 
attention, thanks partly to the earthworks that pro- 
tected Reynolds's New York battery at the bridge-head. 
But no sooner were the Confederates aware of what 
was forward than their batteries became active. As 
the One Hundred and Thirty-seventh Pennsylvania was 
crossing a shell struck and exploded, shattering and 
sinking a pontoon, killing and wounding several men, 
and sending the rest precipitately back to the shelter 

1 40 W. R., p. 326. 2 Ibid., pp. 338, 342. 



188 WADS WORTH OF GENESEO 

from which they had just emerged. During the delay- 
caused by the repairing of the bridge General Reyn- 
olds came over to Wadsworth and ordered the move- 
ment to be abandoned. But the latter, not convinced 
that it was impracticable, urged his reasons till he ob- 
tained permission to continue. The brigade (Cutler's) 
which held the position farthest up the river he could 
safely take care of by sending it along under cover of the 
bank to the bridge at Franklin's Crossing. As for the 
other brigades, Wadsworth hoped that the vigorous work 
of the New York battery would soon begin to tell on 
the Confederate guns. 

His confidence was well justified. Though the enemy 
was playing havoc with the men and horses of the bat- 
tery, the coolness and nerve of its officers kept its fire 
steady and sure. The duel, in which some of the ar- 
tillery on the north bank also took part, lasted an hour 
and a half; twice the Confederate batteries succeeded 
in delaying the withdrawal of the infantry over the 
bridge, but in the end they were silenced. After an- 
other half-hour of slow firing Captain Reynolds began 
to withdraw his battery piece by piece, keeping up the 
game till the last gun was limbered up. 1 When, a little 
before ten o'clock, none remained to cross except skir- 
mishers and pickets, Wadsworth, who had superintended 
the crossing from the south bank, rode over and set his 
command in motion. 2 The other divisions of the First 
Corps were already several miles ahead on their way 
to the field of battle. 

This episode of the Chancellorsville campaign — the 
three days' stay of Wadsworth's men on the south side 
of the Rappahannock, together with the "charge in pon- 
toons" that began it and the anxious recrossing with 
which it ended — though rarely recorded in the histories 

1 39 W. R., p. 275. 

2 40 W. R., p. 362. Wadsworth's estimate of his loss during this crossing 
was 20 men killed and wounded. The loss of his division in killed at Fitz- 
hugh's Crossing, April 29 to May 2, was 15; the total loss in killed, wounded, 
and missing, 154.— (39 W. R., pp. 173, 261.) 



1863] FITZHUGH'S CROSSING 189 

because it was not in the direct train of mighty events 
that constituted the great battle, has always been a 
vivid memory to those who took part in it. Spite of 
its dearth of fighting, it had an effect of completeness 
to which the gallantry of its leader lent, perhaps, a final 
happy touch. The newspaper correspondents with their 
ready pens gave his distinctive act an additional glamour 
by the ambiguous statement that General Wadsworth 
"swam his horse" across the Rappahannock, thereby 
thrilling their readers and alarming his family; 1 but for 
the soldiers who watched him standing erect as he crossed 
the river what he really did was sufficient to seal their 
admiration for him as a forward fighter. The day of 
supreme trial for Wadsworth's division of the First Corps 
was only two months distant in the future; when that 
day should find it standing firm against Lee's advance 
upon Gettysburg it was to mean much that commander 
and men should know each other to be "one equal temper 
of heroic hearts." 2 

1 "I do not think I exposed myself unnecessarily," he wrote to his eldest 
daughter a week later. "I had a very difficult task assigned me. If the 
enemy had attacked my troops in any force before I got the bridges laid, 
they would have cut them to pieces; so my place was with them to organize 
and direct them." 

2 General Orders, 

No. 40. Hdqks. 1st Division, 1st Army Corps, 

May 9, 1863. 
The general commanding, availing himself of the temporary repose now 
enjoyed by his command to review the operations of the past few days, 
deems it proper to express his thanks to Colonel Bragg, Sixth Wisconsin Vol- 
unteers, Colonel Morrow, Twenty-fourth Michigan Volunteers, and the gal- 
lant men under their command, for the heroic manner in which they crossed 
the Rappahannock and seized the heights on the opposite shore on the 29th 
of April; and likewise to Brigadier-General Meredith and the whole of the 
Fourth Brigade for the promptness with which they followed in this daring 
enterprise. The skill and courage with which Captain Reynolds' Battery 
L, First New York Artillery, returned the enemy's fire, the boldness exhib- 
ited by the Fourteenth New York State Militia as skirmishers, and the stead- 
iness of the whole command during the advance and retreat, have afforded 
the general commanding the highest gratification and inspired him with en- 
tire confidence in the troops of this division. 

By command of Brigadier-General Wadsworth: 

John A. Kress, 
Lieutenant-Colonel and Acting Assistant Inspector-General. 

—(39 W. R., p. 262.) 



190 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

The long march of twenty-two miles which the men 
of the First Corps, loaded down with eight days' rations, 
had now to make on this hot Saturday in May was 
taken with a will, for they could not doubt that a full 
meed of fighting would be theirs. Yet, meanwhile, as 
was presently to be proved, another column of men, 
led by Stonewall Jackson, was marching to much bet- 
ter purpose. When, well into the evening, Wadsworth's 
brigades came to a halt, they were still short of United 
States Ford, where the other divisions of the corps had 
crossed to join the army. Leaving them by the road- 
side for a snatch of rest, their commander pushed ahead 
to find Reynolds and to get orders for the positions that 
his troops were to occupy. The ford crossed, he plunged 
into the depths of the forest known as the Wilderness, 
a region the mystery of which was intensified on this 
night of brilliant moonlight by the incessant call of the 
whippoorwills and by the presence of the two armies 
encamped within its vast shadows. The rout of How- 
ard's corps had occurred but a few hours earlier, and as 
Wadsworth made his way along the crowded road he 
gathered such scraps of information and rumor as one 
picks up at a time like this — the news of Jackson's sud- 
den onslaught upon the negligently guarded flank, of the 
final stemming of his advance, of the isolated situation 
of Sickles's corps. Even as he rode the crash of mus- 
ketry told of the midnight attack by which Sickles was 
fighting his way back to the Union lines. Having found 
Reynolds at last, Wadsworth learned that the other di- 
visions of the First Corps were in position holding the 
right along Hunting Creek and that he was to occupy 
a second line behind them. He went back to his division, 
roused the men from their three hours' rest, conducted 
the brigades through forest roads to their several sta- 
tions. It was broad daylight when he finished his work, 
and the battle of Sunday, May 3, had begun — fighting 
as fierce as any during the whole war — which ended in 
Hooker's being driven back from the Chancellor house. 



1863] CHANCELLORSVILLE 191 

In the midst of that terrific roar of cannon and musketry, 
Wadsworth and his men, in their exhaustion, lay down 
and went to sleep. 

For all the use that Hooker made of them, however, 
they might as well have rested in the log huts of the 
disgarnished camp at Belle Plain. All told there were 
thirty-seven thousand fresh troops on the edge of the 
zone of battle eager to be ordered into the fight; but 
neither on this morning nor on the two following days 
did the stunned commander of the Army of the Poto- 
mac make any effort to use them, not even to aid Sedg- 
wick, fighting his own battle at Salem Church. The 
story of the army in those baffled days of despair may 
be given in Wadsworth's own words as he told it in a 
letter to his eldest daughter: 

The next day [Monday] we all lay quiet, strangely 
enough to all of us, hearing the combat between Sedg- 
wick and the foe, who had turned upon him. It was 
the universal opinion that we should have attacked. 
Tuesday we rested quietly, and Tuesday night were or- 
dered to recross. After this order was issued we had a 
tremendous storm of rain. The river rose from three 
to four feet in as many hours. The smaller water courses 
were impassable. My pickets 1 were cut off by Hunting 
Creek, which became a great river, and my division di- 
vided by a small stream which for two hours swam a 
horse in crossing. The movement was ordered sus- 
pended at nine o'clock, and resumed at eleven or twelve 
o'clock. It was a gloomy, anxious, miserable night, all 
soaked to the skin and splashing about in mud and 
water of unknown depth. The enemy did not follow. 2 

1 The 24th Michigan had been sent off to the extreme right to do picket 
duty. 

2 The notes jotted down by Dawes in his journal on May 4, 5, and 6 
make a valuable supplement to Wadsworth's account: 

"Monday, May 4. — Hot firing on the picket line in the night. An attack 
by the enemy expected, and men forbidden to take off their blankets. 

" Ordered under arms at ten o'clock this forenoon. Twenty-fourth Michi- 
gan has just moved to the right, and our regiment is to support them in 
case of a fight. At half-past eleven nothing has come of it. Just got per- 



192 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

"We are all humiliated at our retreat," wrote Wads- 
worth in his discouragement at the results of a cam- 
paign which had opened so brilliantly. "Hooker has 
lost the confidence of the army by his conduct of this 
movement." Indeed, it was everywhere recognized that 
not the army but the commanding-general had been 
beaten. With the right leader, the fighting stuff in the 
Army of the Potomac could work wonders. The ques- 
tion was, would it ever come to its own? 

As soon as Wadsworth's division had established itself 
in camp at White Oak Church and Fitzhugh's Plantation, 
not far from the place where he had "swum his horse" 
across the Rappahannock, he applied for a brief leave 
of absence; private affairs, which since the battle of 
Bull Run he had managed with the left hand, as it 

mission to get dinner. Boys are all cooking coffee. Drizzling rain at inter- 
vals this afternoon. At 5 p. M. there was a very sharp fight at the same 
place on our left. At this writing, 6 p. m., there is a heavy cannonading in 
the direction of Fredericksburg. Ten p. m., heavy volleys of musketry on 
our left aud quite a sharp fusillade on our right. Constant alarms until 
midnight. . . . 

" Tuesday., May 5.— Foggy this morning. At this writing, 8 a. m., 
scattering musketry fire a mile away to our left. This developed into a 
heavy fire of about twenty minutes' duration. The sun will be very hot 
to-day. Heavy whiskey rations being dealt out to the men. . . . Whiskey 
enough was sent here to make the whole regiment dead drunk. 

"Eleven o'clock A.M. — Orders are: 'Be ready to move at once to the 
right.' It is said that we are to lead in an attack. It is always so. Guess 
our time has come. False alarm. Some mistake by one of the nine months' 
colonels on the right. Lie down again and try to kill time. Very hot. 
Orders to be under arms at sunset. Very heavy thunder-storm at 5 p. m. 
Miserable situation. Colonel Bragg and I and Huntington all crouched un- 
der one oil-cloth in the driving rain. At dark, rumor has come of a general 
retreat. Mules are packed and sent to the rear. The rain continues pour- 
ing down, and our condition that of unmitigated discomfort. Picket-firing 
the entire night. 

"Wednesday, May 6. — About three o'clock this morning the infantry 
began to move for the rear. Our brigade moved the last of our corps at 
3.30 a. m. Mud very deep and a drizzling rain. At 5 a. m. we reached 
the pontoon bridge at United States Ford. Forty thousand men are not 
yet over. Our division formed in line of battle to protect the passage of the 
troops. Crossed at 8 a. m. unmolested. Soaking rain and chilly. One 
hundred thousand miserable and discouraged men are wading through this 
terrible mud and rain. We cannot understand it in any other way than as 
a great disaster." — (6th Wisconsin, pp. 138, 139.) 



1863] LEE'S PLANS 193 

were, now required his presence at Geneseo. The request 
was refused on the ground that "impending movements 
would not allow it," But Hooker soon found that his 
purpose of continuing operations against the enemy was 
impossible of immediate execution. Not only were regi- 
ments whose terms of service had expired on the point 
of departure — with no fresh men to take their places — 
but in consequence there was much work of reorganiza- 
tion and redistribution to be done. Moreover, Lincoln 
intervened, suggesting for the moment a posture of de- 
fence and intimating his knowledge that some of the 
corps and division commanders had lost confidence in 
Hooker. 1 Since active operations were thus to be de- 
ferred, Wadsworth made a second application for leave 
and his request was granted. 

A week later, however, when, having despatched his 
business in haste, he returned to camp, he found a change 
in the aspect of things. All signs indicated a forward 
movement on Lee's part. He had been reinforced by 
Longstreet; his cavalry, five brigades, was gathering at 
Culpeper under Stuart; Richmond newspapers, received 
through the picket exchange on the banks of the Rappa- 
hannock, announced that the Army of Northern Virginia 
was about to make an important movement. This time 
waiting and watchfulness was the game of the Army of 
the Potomac; Lee was to keep them at it for a fort- 
night longer, before the cavalry fight at Brandy Station 
on June 9 gave Hooker his clue. 

The uneasy state of the army in this season of flying 
rumors is described by Dawes in a letter to M. B. G. on 
June 5. "We were sold again. After turning out at 
midnight and packing our traps, and preparing for a 
battle which somebody seemed to think impending, our 
orders were countermanded. So we have rebuilt our 
canvas cities and settled down again. The fact is, some- 
body is very much exercised lest the terrible Lee may 
i 40 W. R., p. 479. 



194 WADS WORTH OF GENESEO 

do something dangerous. Three times now of late this 
army has been turned out of house and home to lie 
sweltering in the sun, only to have its marching orders 
countermanded. The boys have long ago learned to 
take such things philosophically. They tear down and 
build up cheerfully, with the shrewd observation that 
'it is only Johnny Reb fooling the balloon again.'" 1 

During these days the departure of the New Jersey 
brigade of nine months' men made the final reduction 
suffered by Wadsworth's division after the battle of 
Chancellorsville. His eight thousand men had been cut 
to four thousand, and this loss, taken with similar re- 
ductions in other divisions and in the artillery, brought 
the First Corps down from seventeen thousand to ten 
thousand men, "present for duty," in round numbers. 
Wadsworth's division now consisted of only two bri- 
gades, the Iron Brigade and Cutler's; but its efficiency 
could not be higher. It was a force fit for hard march- 
ing and hard fighting — iron to the last man. 

At length, after more orders and counter-orders, at 
daybreak on June 12 the First Corps broke camp for 
good and began that series of marches the end of which 
was accomplished on July 1, when it met and stayed 
Heth's division of the Confederates advancing upon Get- 
tysburg in search of shoes. Together with the Third 
and the Eleventh Corps it constituted the right wing of 
the Army of the Potomac, with Reynolds in command. 
His place as corps commander was taken by Doubleday, 
who, having become a major-general of volunteers, now 
ranked Wads worth. 

Reynolds's march was toward the fine of the Orange 
and Alexandria Railroad, with a view to preventing the 
cavalry raid across the Rappahannock from Brandy 
Station which Lee was supposed to be contemplating. 
There was need of haste, for the Confederates already 
had a start of nearly a week. From White Oak Church 

1 6th Wisconsin, p. 147. 



1863] A FORCED MARCH 195 

to Deep Run by the back roads which Reynolds took to 
avoid observation is full twenty miles. Having broken 
camp at dawn, the troops marched till dusk. The day 
was one of scorching heat and suffocating dust; no clear 
water was to be found, and sometimes even the puddles 
were miles apart. During the noon halt Wadsworth 
had to superintend the execution of a deserter from the 
Iron Brigade. The case was a flagrant one, but the 
spectacle did not add to the refreshment of the hour's 
rest. 

The next day, June 13, was cloudy, and the march 
was only fourteen miles to Bealeton Station on the 
Orange and Alexandria Railroad. At the end of the 
day Reynolds received orders to make Manassas Junc- 
tion and then Centreville by forced marches. 1 Ewell's 
corps, the advance of Lee's army, was known to be in 
the Shenandoah Valley, and Hooker was planning to 
withdraw at once from before Fredericksburg to cover 
Washington. 

In good season, on Sunday, June 14, Wadsworth's 
men, with the rest of the First Corps, started on their 
journey of thirty miles. Again the sun scorched and 
the dust choked; the men suffered from them as never 
before. FoUowing the line of the railroad toward Wash- 
ington, the troops checked off the stages of their prog- 
ress by the names of the stations, familiarity with which 
had been gained by sterner means than the study of 
time-tables. Warrenton Junction marked seven miles 
from Bealeton — Catlett's, ten. In the afternoon there 
was less delay from fording brooks and crossing streams 
imperfectly bridged, and the quickened pace came at a 
time when the men could least endure it. The com- 
mand, "Close up, men, close up!" was incessant and 
relentless. "No man was allowed to fall out of ranks, 
under any pretext, without a pass from his company 
commander, approved by the regimental surgeon. Those 
1 45 W. R., p. 88. 



196 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

who did were driven in again by the field-officer at the 
rear of each regiment, or 'gobbled up' by the rear- 
guard and urged forward forcibly." ' "For three miles 
before the halt at Kettle Run, the men became frantic 
for water, as there was none save now and then in some 
mud-hole or slimy frog marsh." 2 

The heights of Centreville, which the enemy might 
at any moment seize, were fourteen miles farther on; 
a night march was imperative. It was already dark 
when the men stepped from stone to stone through the 
waters of Kettle Run; at Broad Run, a larger stream, 
they had the help of torches and bonfires on the banks 
and an improvised bridge of rails. From the heat of 
the day there was relief, but as the hours of the night 
dragged on sheer sleepiness caused incredible agony. At 
dawn, having struggled six miles to Manassas Junction, 
they were ordered to halt with the promise of five hours 
of rest; "that noise which once heard on a still night 
is never forgotten, the solid tramp of a heavy column on 
a hard road, like the dull roar of a distant cataract," 3 
gradually ceased; the exhausted men threw themselves 
on the damp grass and slept. 

The remaining eight miles to Centreville were ac- 
complished during the forenoon of June 15, completing 
a march of sixty-four miles made in seventy -eight hours. 
Here the First Corps rested for the remainder of that 
day and all of the next, while Hooker was concentrating 
his army, — three corps at Centreville, three at Fairfax, 
one corps and the cavalry at Manassas Junction. The 
news reached the troops that Milroy's force at Win- 
chester, in the Shenandoah Valley, had been attacked 
and a large part of it captured, thus leaving the way 
clear for Lee to enter Maryland and Pennsylvania. The 
same newspapers contained Lincoln's proclamation call- 

1 History of the 150th Pa., p. 109. 

2 History of the 24th Michigan, p. 147. 

3 Henderson's Life of Stonewall Jackson, I, 337. 



1863] FOLLOWING LEE 197 

ing for one hundred thousand militia to repel the in- 
vading force. Clearly, stirring events were ahead. 

On Wednesday, June 17, at 3 a. m., Reynolds put 
two of his corps in motion toward Leesburg, bringing 
them still nearer the Blue Ridge and the Potomac. 
The route prescribed to the First Corps led it over a 
cross-road through a dense growth of scrub pine which 
shut out the breeze but not the sun. The heat was in- 
tolerable, the dust an enveloping fog. Cases of sun- 
stroke were frequent, and officers fared little better than 
men. 

In this state of things, any means that Wadsworth 
could use to lighten the burdens borne by his choking 
ranks he did not hesitate to employ. He discovered that 
an ambulance had been filled with the valises of the offi- 
cers of his own staff, a practice expressly forbidden by 
Hooker in a circular issued the very day before with 
intent to reduce the superfluous baggage in his trains. 1 
The requirements of this circular Wadsworth now put 
into instant effect to the extent of ordering all the valises 
thrown out at once, — the men delighted to say that his 
own was among them, — but he shut his eyes to the fur- 
ther provision that "ambulances will not be appropri- 
ated to any other than their authorized use," and for 
the baggage of the officers substituted the knapsacks and 
muskets of the men. 2 The division papers that formed 
part of the property thus jettisoned were fortunately 
rescued by a salvage party sent out the next day; as for 
the superfluous baggage, the young men of Wadsworth's 
staff took the hint and sent it to the rear by less irregular 
methods than his. 

The day's march of fourteen miles brought the First 
Corps to Herndon Station on the Loudoun and Hamp- 
shire Railroad. The next day no orders came; the men 
sought shade from the sun and made up sleep. On 
Friday, June 19, they advanced six miles and encamped 

1 45 W. R., p. 150. ■ Ctb Wisconsin, p. 153. 



198 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

beyond Guilford Station, along the banks of Broad Run. 
Here they lay for five days. 

During this interval Hooker was engaged with scant 
success in importuning Washington for reinforcements 
and for a free hand. The other task which occupied 
him — that of finding out how much of Lee's force had 
crossed the Potomac — proved, in the existing state of 
alarm, nearly as difficult. In the words of Hooker's 
chief of staff, "The whole country, generals and all, 
seem struck with heavy stampede." ' At last Lee's 
movements were disclosed: on June 23 two of E well's 
divisions had laid Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, under 
tribute; on the next day the corps of Longstreet and of 
Hill had crossed to the north bank of the Potomac. 

This grand strategy, however, was little more than 
camp rumor for Wadsworth's men, refreshing themselves 
in the oak groves along the pleasant waters of Broad 
Run. As for their commander, he had turned bridge- 
builder and was superintending the erection of a struct- 
ure over Goose Creek, so that if Hooker should have 
to pursue Lee into Maryland the army might be able 
to march by the shortest route to Edwards Ferry, where 
a pontoon bridge was being thrown across the Potomac. 

Early on the morning of June 25, as a result of the 
knowledge that Hooker now possessed, the First Corps 
was set in motion. Again Reynolds was put in com- 
mand of three corps that now were to constitute the 
left wing 2 and ordered to make haste to lay hold of the 
passes of South Mountain, as the continuation of the 
Blue Ridge north of the Potomac is called. With these 
in possession of the Federals, it would be impossible 
for Lee to burst through from the Cumberland Valley 
and to threaten Washington and Baltimore. 

The seven miles from camp to Edwards Ferry the 

1 45 W. R., p. 209. 

2 The First, Third, and Eleventh Corps, with a brigade of cavalry and 
two sections of artillery. 



1863] INTO MARYLAND 199 

First Corps covered easily, only to find that the single 
pontoon bridge was still encumbered by the long and 
slow-moving trains of the Eleventh Corps. Down-stream 
another bridge was in course of rapid construction; on 
both banks was the picturesque animation that always 
accompanies the crossing of a river by an army. 

At last the men of the First Corps felt the bridge 
sway beneath their tread, and as they took their first 
steps on the soil of Maryland they broke into cheers. 
It was a relief to be out of the land of the enemy, even 
though the State which they were now entering to de- 
fend was but half-loyal. Not only were there less for- 
ests and more farms, but from many a farm-house they 
might expect substantial sympathy. Stirring, indeed, 
Avas the welcome that met them, and as they marched 
through Poolesville they found themselves strangely 
moved by the sight of a large group of school-children 
drawn up to watch them pass. 

At this high pitch of feeling they trudged on, for a 
time taking little note of the rain which had begun to 
fall. But when, after a day's march of nearly a score 
of miles, they went into camp near Barnesville, their 
elation of spirit had long since felt the effect of the in- 
vading wet. One regiment found itself turned into a 
field where the water stood from three to six inches 
deep between the rows of corn. By happy chance a 
large stack of straw in a farm-yard close at hand caught 
Wadsworth's eye. Its purchase by him and its demo- 
lition by his men occupied but a few moments, and, as 
far as the straw would go, his division was made dry and 
comfortable. 1 

To reach their destination it was necessary for the 
First Corps to start at daylight on the morning of June 

1 History of the 70th N. Y„ p. 229. A night or two later, after an- 
other long march in the rain, be bought a large quantity of fence rails 
that his men might dry their sodden clothes and have hot coffee. — (New 
York at Gettysburg, III, 1001.) 



200 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

26. The march of that day was made harder by deep 
mud, drizzling rain, and the ups and downs and twists 
of the rough roads running over the Catoctin ridge. 
When, however, having accomplished eighteen miles, 
they went into camp near Jefferson, the long green wall 
of South Mountain blocked the western view. 

Since leaving the Rappahannock, Wadsworth's men 
had come over a hundred miles, and it was not strange 
that the rugged ground covered by this day's march 
should have completed the destruction of many a pair 
of shoes. His action, as he saw not only men but offi- 
cers trudging along with bleeding feet, was no more 
impulsive and characteristic than in the case of the 
valise-filled ambulance or the stack of straw; but as 
an extreme measure it caught the soldiers' humor more 
quickly. 

We came to a town on the line of march [so he told 
the story to a newspaper correspondent some eight 
months later], and I, who was riding at the head of the 
column, spurred ahead to see if there were not some 
shoe stores where I could purchase what was needed 
for the men. All the shops were closed; the first men 
I saw were two sitting outside of a closed shop. 

"Are there any shoe stores in this town?" I asked. 
They replied, in a gruff way, that they could not tell, 
there might be and there might not. I told them that 
I wanted to buy shoes for my troops who were bare- 
footed. They replied they guessed I wouldn't get many. 

At that I got angry. Said I: "There are two pairs 
of shoes, at any rate, which I see on your feet. Take 
them off instantly!" They were obliged to do it. I went 
through the town and took the shoes off every man's 
feet I could see, and thus I raised about two hundred 
pairs in all. One fine old fellow, a miller, whom I met, 
I did not deprive of his own pair. I rode up to him and 
asked if he had any shoes he could spare me, describing 
the pitiful condition of my men. The old man said: 
"I don't know if there's any shoes in the house or not, 
but" — looking down at his feet — "here's a pair you're 
welcome to, at any rate." I would not let him take 



1863] MEADE SUCCEEDS HOOKER 201 

them off, but he gave me some from his house. All the 
rest I stripped. 1 

On June 27, Lee having kept on his way up the Cum- 
berland Valley, all that was required of the First Corps 
was an eight-mile march which took them through Mid- 
dletown and a little distance beyond along the National 
Pike, which crosses the mountain at Turner's Gap. Less 
than two miles away, at the summit of the pass, was the 
battle-field of South Mountain, where ten months before 
the Iron Brigade had won its name. The officers who 
now rode up the gentle slope of the famous highway to 
note the landmarks of that well-fought mountain struggle 
and to find the scattered graves of their comrades had a 
sense that battle was again hovering over them; when 
the two mighty armies at present separated by South 
Mountain next met, the shock might well be such as 
war had never yet known. 

On the following day, June 28, came the news that 
Hooker had been relieved, and with a pang of regret 
the First Corps learned that his successor was not their 
Reynolds, but Meade. Reynolds, they believed, was 
the great soldier, clear-sighted, cool, yet full of ardor; 
a fighter by instinct and a master of his art. " High was 
his name, high was his might"; high, too, they felt, should 
be his command. 2 Yet even then the fatal bullet was 

1 Pictorial Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the Rebellion, p. 458. 

2 "As a matter of fact, General Reynolds was sent for by the President, 
and, on the second day of June, 18C3, discussed with him for a whole even- 
ing and late into the night, at the White House, the question of his taking 
command of the Army of the Potomac. Reynolds, conscious of his ability 
to command that army, fully recognized the great responsibility of such a 
trust, and, that he might be untrammelled in his possible future leadership, 
on that occasion made it a condition of his ever taking command that he 
should have absolute control of that army and alone direct its movements, 
upon which point Halleck and Hooker, some three weeks later on, disagreed, 
with the result that Hooker was superseded by Major-General Meade, who 
was then allowed to have his own way." — (From H. S. Huidekoper's Address 
at the Unveiling of the Equestrian Statue of Major-General John F. Reyn- 
olds at Gettysburg, July 1, 1899.) 



202 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

waiting for him in the cartridge-box of one of Heth's 
sharp-shooters. 

From this point the course of events was rapid. Lee's 
army was known to be over the Pennsylvania boundary. 
What Meade must do was to follow him north, spreading 
his corps so that Lee could not slip around his flank, and 
at the same time holding them so well in hand that they 
could be concentrated in case Lee made a sudden attack. 
On the afternoon of this day, June 28, the First Corps 
was drawn back ten miles to Frederick; the next day, 
still a part of the left wing, it made a forced march in 
the rain of twenty-three miles or more to Emmitsburg. 
This day's journey was like no other, for exaltation 
blotted out fatigue. Here was no half-loyalty. Each 
little village that they passed through — Adamsville, Lew- 
istown, Catoctin Furnace, Mechanicstown — roused them 
with its flags and its cheers; from the farms along the 
road women issued forth bearing pails of water and of 
milk, loaves of fresh bread, and cherries in abundance. 
A mounting wave of enthusiasm swept with them up 
toward the Pennsylvania boundary, quickening their 
desire to find and to fight the invader. 

On June 30, making a late morning start and leaving 
behind them the Eleventh Corps, they crossed Mason 
and Dixon's line, going into camp at Marsh Creek after 
a march of less than five miles. In the afternoon offi- 
cers were busily occupied; the troops had to be mus- 
tered for pay; quartermaster, commissary, ordnance, and 
regimental returns were to be made out, for it was the 
last day of the fiscal year. At Wadsworth's request, 
Lieutenant-Colonel Kress set out to discover if possible 
a map in some friendly farm-house, for the unexpected 
course of the campaign into Pennsylvania had found 
the Army of the Potomac but meagrely supplied with 
topographical information. From Buford's division of 
cavalry, passing by on the road to Gettysburg, Wads- 
worth and his men learned of the proximity of the enemy. 



1863] AT MARSH CREEK 203 

"We have found the Johnnies," the riders called out; 
"they are just above and to the left of us, and the 
woods are full of 'em!" 1 In expectation that the John- 
nies might speak for themselves, the divisions of the 
First Corps were so disposed at nightfall as to guard 
against surprise from the west. Among officers and 
men the feeling was strong that they had at last reached 
the brink of battle. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower 
came." 

1 The Cannoneer, p. 61. 



CHAPTER Vn 
GETTYSBURG 

"But who, if he be called upon to face 
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined 
Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 
Is happy as a Lover; and attired 
With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired." 

— Wordsworth — Character of the Happy Warrior. 

Daylight on July 1 brought no sign of the enemy, and 
Wadsworth's division, breaking camp, prepared for the 
march to Gettysburg, which lay some five miles to the 
north. Having been the leading division on the day 
before, it was to-day, according to custom, to let the 
other divisions pass it on the road and to take its posi- 
tion in the rear. As the troops were forming, however, 
General Reynolds rode up and directed Wadsworth to 
start his men at once; to follow the routine of march 
procedure would waste precious time and the First Di- 
vision must take the head of the column again. On 
the day before, it seemed, the enemy had shown him- 
self not far from Gettysburg, having come through the 
South Mountain range by the Cashtown or Chambers- 
burg Road; 1 another force, Ewell's, which had been oc- 
cupying York and Carlisle and threatening Harrisburg, 
was probably approaching from the north; and if, as 
appeared likely, Lee was planning to concentrate his 
army at Gettysburg, it was highly desirable that sup- 
port for Buford should be at hand in good season. 2 A 

1 See the general map at the end of the book. 

2 "I do not know under what orders General Reynolds moved that day. 
He was generally very particular in communicating his orders to his division 
commanders, but on that occasion he communicated none if he had any." — 

204 



186S] LEE'S ADVANCE 205 

glance at the map which Wadsworth had procured and 
which the two generals sat down by the road-side to ex- 
amine showed them the roads converging upon the town 
from all points of the compass and gave plausibility to 
the conjecture. At any rate, from Buford, energetic 
and reliable, they could get what information had been 
brought in during the night, and so they soon remounted 
and with the members of their staffs pushed on ahead 
of the infantry to find him in Gettysburg. 

When they were within a mile of the town they 
encountered an aide of Buford's riding in haste to meet 
them. A considerable force of the enemy's infantry, 
he reported, was advancing upon Gettysburg from the 
direction of Cashtown and was driving back the cavalry 
vedettes. Taking in the full significance of this news, 
Reynolds and Wadsworth paused a moment to consider 
whether their troops should go into the town or should 
take position on the elevated ground to the west where 
the cavalry- were now making their stand. In order 
that the town might not be endangered by the shell- 
ing, Reynolds decided upon the latter course. 1 Leaving 
Wadsworth to direct the troops to what was to be the 

(General Wadsworth's testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of 
the War, Report of 1865, I, 413.) The orders for July 1 contained in the cir- 
cular of June 30 required the First Corps to move to Gettysburg with the 
Eleventh Corps in supporting distance; but Meade was already preparing to 
withdraw his army to the defensive line of Pipe Creek, and his expectation 
was that, if the First Corps should encounter the Confederates in superior 
force at or near Gettysburg, Reynolds would hold the enemy in check and 
fall slowly back.— (-to W. R., p. 462. See also the despatch to Hancock of 
12 30 on p. 461). Reynolds, on the other hand, was guiding his conduct 
more'bv the sentence in Meade's letter of June 30: "... if they advance 
against me, I must concentrate at that point where they show the strongest 
f orce ." — (45 W. R., p. 420). Thus Reynolds, keen to meet the enemy and to 
attack him before he could concentrate, felt himself free to hurry the First 
Corps to support Buford at Gettysburg. Meade's circular of July 1 (45 
W R., p. 458), in which the plan for the movement to Pipe Creek was out- 
lined, and his letter to Reynolds of the same date (p. 460), in which is ex- 
pressed reliance on Reynolds's judgment as to the desirability of concentra- 
tion at Gettysburg, were probably not received by Reynolds. 
1 Wadsworth's testimony.— (C. W., 1865, I, 413.) 



206 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

field of battle, he then rode forward to consult with the 
cavalry commander. 1 

Almost at the same time the triple boom of cannon, 
the cavalry leader's signal gun, came across the fields, 
followed by the prolonged crackling sound of musketry. 
The contest had begun, but it would be an hour yet 
ere Wadsworth's division could get up. Summoning it 
to come on in haste, he impatiently watched for its 
arrival. Out of all the infantry in the great Army of 
the Potomac, it had been chosen by fate to bear the 
brunt of the first onset in what could hardly be other 
than one of the decisive battles of the war. If Lee were 
victorious, his success would mean foreign recognition 
of the Confederacy and the eventual triumph of its 
cause; if defeated, he never again, in all probability, 
would be able to undertake an offensive campaign against 
the Federal arms. On the First Division of the First 
Corps, therefore, in the early hours of the battle, de- 
pended great issues, and Wadsworth as he waited glo- 
ried in its opportunity. 

Meanwhile sounds of the fight were swelling stronger 
and stronger. Presently aides dashed by on the Emmits- 

1 Lee had designated Cashtown, eight miles west of Gettysburg, as the 
place of concentration for his army, and on July 1 his head-quarters were 
to be there. — (See The Strategy of the Gettysburg Campaign, by Major- 
General George B. Davis, Mass. Mil. Hist. Soc. Papers, III, 405-409.) 
The force approaching Gettysburg on the morning of that day was Heth's 
division, 7,600 strong, which belonged to A. P. Hill's corps and which, ac- 
cording to the accepted story, was marching thither in the hope of supplying 
itself with shoes; since, in the absence of his cavalry, Lee was ignorant of 
the whereabouts of the Army of the Potomac, Heth was supported by Pen- 
der's division of 6,200 men. Behind them, coming from the direction of 
Chambersburg, was the main strength of the Confederate army. Near 
Heidlersburg, nine miles northeast of Gettysburg, were two of the divisions 
of Ewell's corps, Rodes's and Early's, with 15,000 men. These, marching 
toward Cashtown, turned toward Gettysburg on orders from Lee after the 
engagement had begun. 

Of Federal troops within reach there were, besides the 3,100 cavalry at 
Gettysburg, the First and the Eleventh Corps, with 20,000 men ; the Eleventh 
Corps, however, was, on the morning of July 1, ten miles away at Emmits- 
burg. Of the two other corps nearest to Gettysburg, the Third and the 
Twelfth, neither reached the field in time to take part in the battle. 



1863] THE BATTLE-GROUND 207 

burg road with messages from Reynolds to Doubleday, 
to Howard, to Sickles; then Reynolds himself appeared, 
riding across the fields to Codori's farm-house on the 
high-road, his escort demolishing the fences in order to 
make a short cut for the troops to the battle-ground; 
finally, from the other direction, the head of the infan- 
try column came into view. As Wadsworth turned it 
into the fields, where it crushed the ripening crops into 
the red earth, non-combatants fell to the rear; the 
men going into action flung aside knapsacks and were 
ready for the command to double-quick. 

The ground where Wadsworth's division was to fight 
on the first of the three days' battle at Gettysburg has 
as its chief characteristic two elevations of land running 
north and south about seven hundred yards apart, be- 
tween them a gently curving dip of open fields. The 
ridge next the town is known as Seminary Hill, from the 
brick building of the Lutheran Seminary situated on 
the road which follows the line of the ridge. The road, 
at that time as now, was pleasantly shaded, and the 
houses along it belonged to professors in the institution. 
Two highways cross the ridge, diverging from each other 
at an angle of about sixty degrees, and the seminary 
building stands about half-way between them. The 
northern road is the turnpike leading to Cashtown and 
to Chambersburg; the southern leads to Fairfield. The 
western ridge, which is hardly more than a roll of ground 
lower and smoother than the eastern, was partly cov- 
ered by some four or five acres of woodland, between 
which and the pike were the buildings of the McPherson 
farm. The western side of this ridge slopes down to 
Willoughby Run. About four hundred feet north of the 
pike, and nearly paralleling it, ran the road-bed of a 
railroad, graded, but with no rails or ties laid; a cutting 
of some depth had been made for it through each of the 
ridges and between them it was carried over the low 
ground on an embankment. North of the railroad the 



208 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

continuation of Seminary Hill was heavily wooded for 
three-eighths of a mile; beyond was open ground rising 
steadily for half a mile to an elevation known as Oak 
Hill, which commands all the region to the south. To the 
east of this northern portion of Seminary Ridge was a 
broad, open plain; east of the seminary itself was the com- 
pact little town of Gettysburg. (See map facing p. 214.) 

The direction given to Wadsworth's troops by Rey- 
nolds brought them out into the open space between 
the ridges and the two diverging roads. The head of 
the column reached the Cashtown pike not long before 
ten o'clock, at the moment when Buford's men had been 
pressed back to the McPherson ridge, where the six 
guns of a battery of horse artillery were stationed. 1 
Reynolds ordered Wadsworth to form the three leading 
regiments of the leading brigade (Cutler's sixteen hun- 
dred men) in line of battle north of the pike; the other 
two were to advance south of it; between them, at the 
point where the road crossed the ridge, he stationed Hall's 
battery, thus relieving the guns in position there. 

The work which Cutler's three regiments had to do 
north of the road admitted of no delay. Even before 
the line could be completely formed they were fired 
upon, and Cutler had to send them forward up the 
little slope without clear knowledge of the enemy's num- 
bers or precise position. At the crest they met the foe; 
the crash was sudden and terrific. Not only were the 
Confederates (three regiments of Davis's Mississippi bri- 
gade of Heth's division) in greater force (about one thou- 
sand nine hundred men), but they overlapped consider- 
ably Cutler's right. Unequal as the conditions were, 
his men fought stubbornly, suffering heavy loss, till an 
order reached them from Wadsworth to retreat. The 
two veteran regiments on the right withdrew in some 
confusion; the third regiment, the One Hundred and 

1 Tidball's battery, commanded by Lieutenant John H. Calef. It was 
this battery that had opened the battle. 



1863] DEATH OF REYNOLDS 209 

Forty-seventh New York, under fire for the first time, 
did not receive the order and remained where it was, 
the men getting what protection they could by lying 
down. The Confederates were now sweeping on in tri- 
umph, partly pursuing Cutler, partly preparing to sur- 
round the isolated New York regiment. Hall's battery 
in the road consequently came in for severe handling from 
the skirmishers advancing on that flank; finally, in de- 
fault of orders to retire from his impossible situation, 
its commander took matters into his own hands. Dur- 
ing his withdrawal all the horses of the last gun were 
shot and he was obliged to leave it behind. 

At the beginning of the engagement Wadsworth had 
taken his stand at the edge of the woods on Seminary 
Hill, from which point of observation he could watch 
the operations of both his brigades. As he took note 
of this succession of misfortunes on the right, he per- 
ceived to his horror that the One Hundred and Forty- 
seventh was still in its advanced position. Evidently 
his order had not reached it and it was now in danger 
of being cut off. On the perilous mission of extricating 
it, if possible, Wadsworth despatched his aide, Captain 
Ellsworth. Then came the worst news of all, stunning 
in its suddenness, overwhelming in its consequences. 
Reynolds was killed, shot by a Confederate sharp-shooter 
on the edge of the McPherson woods as he was sending 
the Iron Brigade into action. "The architect of the 
battle had fallen dead across its portal." 

Wadsworth was therefore, as he believed, in com- 
mand in the absence of Doubleday, and the situation 
was at the very acme of crisis. He instantly gave orders 
to Hall to go toward the town and to take a position 
to cover the retreat of the troops thither. When Hall 
asked that he might first recover his abandoned gun, 
Wadsworth ordered him peremptorily to make haste, 
for no time was to be lost. 1 

1 Hall's report, 43 W. R., p. 359. 



210 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Fortunately, from the other end of the field help was 
already under way to the imperilled right wing. General 
Doubleday, who, unknown to Wadsworth, had arrived as 
the nineteen hundred men of the Iron Brigade were going 
into action, had detained for reserve its rear regiment, 
the Sixth Wisconsin, and the brigade guard; now, with 
the sureness and skill of a trained soldier, he sent this 
body of five hundred men speeding to the place where 
their impact would prove most telling. Davis's brigade, 
made aware of the danger, gave over the pursuit of Cut- 
ler and faced to meet them. Swiftly blue and gray ap- 
proached each other, their lines being parallel to the turn- 
pike and the railroad embankment. A carefully aimed 
volley or two from the men of the Sixth Wisconsin, their 
muskets resting on the road-side fence rails, checked the 
onset of the yelling Confederates and sent them rushing 
for shelter to the railroad cut on their right. In this 
position the fire of one of the guns from the horse artil- 
lery stationed on Seminary Ridge began to tell on them 
severely. 1 Through the smoke the watchers there could 
descry other blue troops deploying beyond the Sixth 
Wisconsin. These, the two regiments stationed by Rey- 
nolds on the left of Hall's battery, having first driven off 
easily the enemy's skirmishers to their left and front, and 
then fallen back with Hall, were now turning to the rescue 
of the regiment on their right, and the line thus lengthened 
charged across the interval of four hundred feet between 
the turnpike and the railroad. A murderous fire met it 
from the Confederates sheltered in the cut; "the whole 
field behind streamed with men who had been shot and 
who were struggling to the rear or sinking in death upon 
the ground"; 2 again and again the colors fell, but each 
time they were uplifted and the men closed up well 
upon them. The Sixth Wisconsin threw forward its 

1 43 W. R., p. 1031. 

2 6th Wis., p. 168. "Four hundred and twenty men started in the regi- 
ment from the turnpike fence, of whom about two hundred and forty reached 
the railroad cut." 



1863] SUCCESS OF IRON BRIGADE 211 

right across the end of the cut, and as the smoke drifted 
away on the sultry breeze the entrapped Confederates 
were seen throwing down their arms. Also, if the figure 
of Dawes came within the field of Wadsworth's glasses, 
he was revealed among the Second Mississippi Volunteers 
holding a clumsy armful of swords collected from its 
officers. 1 

If ever Wadsworth had reason to glory in the alert- 
ness and firmness of his fighters it was at this moment- 
By the swift and brilliant stroke of these three regi- 
ments the knot of troubles on the right was cut clean 
through, and matters at once began to straighten them- 
selves out. The One Hundred and Forty-seventh New 
York, which in the space of half an hour had lost in 
killed and wounded two hundred and seven out of four 
hundred men engaged, 2 could make its retreat unmo- 
lested. As for the enemy's force, it was, except for a small 
nucleus, resolved into groups of unarmed stragglers. 3 

The cheer of a victory thus snatched from defeat 
on the right was heightened by the good news from the 
left. The Iron Brigade, advancing over the crest south 
of the McPherson woods, had surrounded and captured 
General Archer and over five hundred men, one-half of 
his brigade; Craig Wadsworth, as it happened, had ad- 
vanced with them, and, together with another of Rey- 
nolds's aides, had had much to do with the success of 
the flanking movement. As a further piece of good fort- 

1 "Later in the day," writes Dawes, "we marched through the railroad 
cut, and about one thousand muskets lay in the bottom of it. Only one 
regiment surrendered as an organization, and that was the 2d Mississippi 
Volunteers. The 95th New York took prisoners, as did also the 14th Brook- 
lyn. All the troops in the railroad cut threw down their muskets, and the 
men either surrendered themselves, or ran out of the other end of the cut." — 
(6 Wis., p. 173.) 

2 43 W. R., p. L 2S*2. The total of three hundred and eighty given there 
is undoubtedly too small. 

3 "Davis's brigade was kept on the left of the road that it might collect 
its stragglers, and from its shattered condition it was not deemed advisable 
to tiring it again into action on that day." — (General Heth's report, 44 W. R., 
p. 638.) 



212 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

une, the Confederates, though in force, did not renew 
the attack, 1 contenting themselves with desultory firing 
from the batteries of Mcintosh's and Pegram's battalions, 
stationed on the high ground beyond Willoughby Run. 
To Doubleday this successful repulse of the Confeder- 
ates, followed by their inaction, seemed to justify a con- 
tinuance of the fight on the ground on which Reynolds 
had begun it, and he accordingly sent orders to Wads- 
worth to dispose his command in the position for which 
it had originally been designated. 2 

Setting his hand to this work with a will, Wadsworth 
presently made the discovery that Hall's battery was 
out of reach, its commander having understood Wads- 
worth's order to mean that he was to take his guns to 
Cemetery Hill, south of the town. In his instant need 
Wadsworth fell upon the horse artillery on Seminary 
Ridge, whither it had gone to refill its limber chests, and 
ordered it forward to the McPherson ridge. Its com- 
mander, however, John H. Calef, a young second lieu- 
tenant just out of West Point, respectfully represented 
that he was under Buford's orders. At a moment of 
such stress and excitement Wadsworth was in no mood 
to give weight to such distinctions; after a rapid pas- 
sage of words he had his way. Whatever his ire, Calef 
had to admit that the necessities of the occasion re- 

1 Heth, although he had two fresh brigades, did not renew the battle at 
that time because, as he says in his report, his orders were merely " to make 
a forced reconnoissance and determine in what force the enemy were, whether 
or not he was massing his forces on Gettysburg." — (44 W. R., p. 637.) Hav- 
ing found, at the expense of heavy loss to two of his brigades, that he had 
encountered not Pennsylvania militia but the Army of the Potomac, he 
awaited the arrival of Ewell from the northeast. 

- Doubleday, on reaching the field just as the battle was beginning, had 
sent to Reynolds for orders. The reply was: "Tell Doubleday I will hold on 
to this road [the Cashtown Turnpike] and he must hold on to that one [the 
Fairfield Road]. "— (Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, p. 130.) This order, 
meant merely to cover the emergency of the moment, had the unfortunate 
effect of directing Doubleday's attention to the left "during the entire day," 
as he himself admits, and prevented him from realizing as quickly as he 
should have done the real danger on the right, of which Buford had full 
knowledge.— (See Buford's despatch to Meade, 43 W. R., p. 924.) 



1863] DISPOSITION OF FIRST CORPS 213 

quired a battery in that position, and he sent thither 
four of his guns. Wadsworth meanwhile dashed off to 
find the necessary infantry supports. The regiments of 
Cutler's brigade, none too strong at the beginning of 
the day, were now pitiably thin; but when eked out with 
the Sixth Wisconsin they made a respectable though far 
from adequate force. Such as they were, however, they 
went forward to the exposed open fields on the ridge 
north of the McPherson farm. 

This done, Wadsworth gave his attention to the 
Iron Brigade, a portion of which, after its capture of 
Archer and his men, had pushed on across Willoughby 
Run. He ordered them back to the shelter of the Mc- 
Pherson woods and disposed them there; then he got 
skirmishers to go forward to occupy the Harman house 
on the other side of the run, and here again, as in the 
case of Calef's battery, it made no difference to him 
that the men whom he obtained came from another 
command — the Third Division, namely, one brigade of 
which was taking position at the left of the Iron Bri- 
gade. Next he turned his thoughts to the protection 
of his right. It is of such occupations as these, crowded 
into moments flying all too fast, that Dawes was think- 
ing when he wrote: "The activity, efficiency, and, if I 
may so express it, the ubiquity of General James S. 
Wadsworth in the battle was remarkable. He was of 
venerable and commanding appearance, and was abso- 
lutely fearless in exposing himself to danger." * 

Meanwhile the remaining divisions of the First Corps, 
with five thousand five hundred men to take into battle, 
and the artillery that accompanied them were reaching 
the field. Stone's brigade of the Third Division was 
posted at the McPherson farm buildings between Wads- 
wor'h's two brigades; the other brigade (Biddle's) of the 
division, as has already been noted, took position on the 

1 Dawes's With the Sixth Wisconsin at Gettysburg. Sketches of War 
History, Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, III, 373. 



214 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

extreme left. Robinson's division, consisting of Paul's 
and Baxter's brigades, Doubleday stationed in reserve 
at and near the seminary, where a breastwork of rails 
was thrown up. Presently, Major-General Howard came 
upon the scene, having ridden on ahead of the infantry 
of the Eleventh Corps, and by virtue of his rank took 
command. 

The knowledge of these reinforcements, together with 
the observation of a movement of the enemy's troops 
which, through the hazy atmosphere, seemed like retreat, 
led Wadsworth to believe that opportunity was offered 
to follow up the first success of the morning. Accord- 
ingly, at 12.10 he sent an aide with a message to Double- 
day or Howard urging a prompt advance. "I am not 
sure," he added, "that they are not moving round on 
our right flank, though I do not see any indication of it." l 

Any such proposal, however, the rapid development 
of events soon disposed of as out of the question. On 
Wadsworth's right, it will be remembered, rose the emi- 
nence of Oak Hill, which was, in fact, a continuation of 
Seminary Ridge and which, if seized by the Confederates, 
would give them an enfilading fire on the troops holding 
the open McPherson ridge. Awake to the possibility 
of danger from this quarter, as the message just quoted 
indicates, Wadsworth had already sent an orderly thither 
to reconnoitre, and when Hall's battery returned from 
its travels despatched it in the same direction under 
shelter of the woods. Howard, on his part, gave orders 
that two of his divisions, as they reached the field, should 
be told off to occupy this important point and the ground 
between it and Wadsworth's right. 2 But it was then too 
late. Hall, on his way toward Oak Hill, was soon met by 
Wadsworth's orderly, returning from his reconnoissance, 
and was told that he was taking the battery "directly 
into the enemy's lines, which were advancing from this 
direction." Hall rode forward until fired upon by the 

1 45 W. R., p. 463. 2 43 W. R., p. 702. 



1863] DANGER FROM THE NORTH 215 

Confederate skirmishers, when he turned and counter- 
marched his battery. 1 

Hurrying this disconcerting news on to Doubleday 
and Howard, Wadsworth waited for what was now in- 
evitable, the sound of Confederate guns from Oak Hill. 
Not long after noon they opened with telling effect upon 
Cutler in his exposed position, and Wadsworth at once 
withdrew the brigade to the shelter of the woods on 
Seminary Ridge, north of the railroad, where it took a 
position facing northwest and began putting up breast- 
works of rails. For the Iron Brigade no change of posi- 
tion was necessary, since the McPherson woods gave it 
sufficient protection; but the other brigades and bat- 
teries of the First Corps were stationed much less advan- 
tageously. Howard, now fully aware of the danger from 
both Rodes and Early, ordered that the two divisions 
of his corps should deploy on the plain north of the 
town, at right angles to the First Corps. 

Looking east from his station on Seminary Hill, 
Wadsworth could observe Howard's "Dutchmen" — 
Schimmelfennig with Von Amsberg and Krzyzanowski, 
Barlow with Von' Gilsa and Ames — coming out from 
Gettysburg, but in the hazy atmosphere of that sultry 
July noon and in the press of his own occupations he 
could not estimate their strength (seven thousand men 
and at first ten guns) 2 or perceive how far to the east 
their line stretched. He could, however, see that the 
left of their line did not extend far enough to connect 
with his own right, and presently Baxter's brigade, sent 
by Doubleday from the reserve division on Seminary 
Ridge, passed him on its way to fill in part this danger- 
ous gap. With these provisions made for taking care of 
the attack from the north, Wadsworth felt confident that 
the main body of the First Corps could keep off the 
enemy from the west, thus delaying Lee's concentration 
and holding Gettysburg as a point at which Meade could 

1 43 W. R., p. 360. J Ibid., p. 725. 



216 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

concentrate his army. Howard, coming at about two 
o'clock to inspect the position of the First Corps, gave 
orders in person to Wadsworth to hold the ridge as long 
as possible. 1 Against the onrush of Lee's veterans this 
body of troops in which Reynolds had taken such pride 
must maintain itself with more than its wonted firm- 
ness; in Wadsworth and all his men was the iron will 
to prove by their deeds that the sacrifice of his life which 
their commander had made had not been in vain. 

The attack began from the north at about 2.30, the 
brigades of Rodes's division moving forward along both 
the eastern and the western slopes of the ridge. Their 
advance, however, was not simultaneous, and Baxter's 
brigade was able first to repel the attack on its right 
and then, changing front, to meet that on its left. The 
Confederate troops here, taken by surprise at short 
range, were severely punished, and Cutler, with the 
coolness and alertness that characterized his handling 
of the brigade in this battle, sent forward his men on 
their flank to complete the work of demoralization. 
After this brilliant affair, in which many prisoners were 
captured, Cutler turned his attention to another of 
Rodes's brigades sweeping across his front to attack 
Stone at the McPherson farm, part of whose line was 
facing north along the turnpike, and here again he poured 
in an effective cross fire. Thus, thanks to the adroitness 
of Baxter and Cutler in taking advantage of their oppo- 
nents' mistakes, thanks, too, to Hill's inaction, this at- 
tack from the north was repulsed. 

By three o'clock, however, Hill had got under way, 
sending two brigades of Heth's division — Brockenbrough 
with 1,070 men, Pettigrew with 2,900 men — against the 
Iron Brigade stationed in the McPherson woods and 
Biddle's brigade on its left. The Iron Brigade, having 
suffered but little in the morning engagement in which 
it had captured Archer, was both fresh and strong; the 
1 43 W. R., p. 266. 



1863] THE IRON BRIGADE 217 

disposition of its regiments had received the approval 
of Wadsworth and Doubleday, and the men had been 
told how much depended on their steadfastness. "The 
devoted men of this brigade stood to action for three 
hours, saw the rebel line form for the attack upon them 
in double and treble lines, knew we could not hope for 
reinforcements or adequate force to meet them, as well 
as the impossibility of holding the position assigned them 
[us], and unflinchingly awaited the blow." x "We have 
come to stay ! " had been their cry as they plunged into the 
woods in the morning; that pledge they were now about 
to redeem in terms that the whole army would wonder at. 
The Confederate force, consisting of fresh troops, was 
in greater numbers than its opponents and came on with 
spirit, but it was received with a firm front, and a sharp 
conflict ensued. Where the Twenty-fourth Michigan met 
the Twenty-sixth North Carolina the contest proved par- 
ticularly destructive. 2 In the end the assailants were re- 
pulsed/ Meanwhile, the pressure from the north contin- 
ued. Baxter and Cutler maintained themselves gallantly, 
but at last, their ammunition gone and their numbers 
greatly reduced, they were withdrawn behind the woods 
on Seminary Ridge. To take their place Doubleday sent 
his last reserve brigade, that of Paul, containing thirteen 
hundred men, fully equal to the desperate work assigned 
them. Most ominous fact of all, however, on the high 
ground beyond Wilderness Run, a line of gray (Pender's 
division, 6,200 strong, consisting of brigades commanded 
by Lane, Thomas, Perrin, and Scales) could be seen extend- 
ing a brigade front beyond either flank of the Union line. 
Under these circumstances it was wise not to attempt 
further resistance in the advanced position on the Mc- 
Pherson ridge; the First Corps artillery, twenty-two guns, 
and a portion of the infantry were accordingly withdrawn 

1 Report of the Iron Brigade at Gettysburg, p. 11. 

2 The percentage of loss in the 24th Michigan was 80; in the 2G th North 
-Carolina, 88.5.— (History of the 24th Michigan, p. 172.) 



218 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

to Seminary Ridge, there to make a last stand, and Doub- 
leday despatched an aide to Howard, importuning him 
for additional troops from the reserve on Cemetery Hill, 
or, failing that assistance, an order to fall back thither. 

This portentous danger was fully evident to Wads- 
worth, stationed on the ridge at a point near the place 
where it is crossed by the Cashtown turnpike, but in 
spite of the great preponderance of the Confederates in 
numbers and their presence to the north as well as to 
the west, his confidence had not yet begun to fail. Know- 
ing well that "if hopes were dupes, fears may be liars" 
and exalted by the successful resistance that the First 
Corps had so far made, he still believed that the de- 
fenders of Seminary Ridge would be able to repel the 
attack about to be launched against them, even if the 
attack were to prove the most formidable of all. But 
not long before four o'clock, while they waited for the 
first signs of the enemy's advance, Wadsworth's atten- 
tion was drawn by one of his aides to the open ground 
in their rear, north of the town, where the Eleventh 
Corps was supposed to be stationed. Of which army 
was the long battle line there a part? Could there be 
any doubt? When told that the skirmishers were ap- 
parently on the side of it toward the town, Wadsworth, 
evidently thinking of the behavior of the Eleventh Corps 
at Chancellorsville, replied that what seemed like a skir- 
mish line must be men placed in the rear to drive up 
stragglers and skulkers. Still uneasy, Kress and others 
about him continued to peer through the smoke and haze 
in an endeavor to establish the identity of some battle 
flag. When at last the excellent field-glasses of the chief 
of artillery, Colonel Wainwright, made out the Con- 
federate colors, it was plain that the Eleventh Corps 
had been driven in. 1 If that were true, the case of the 

1 The rout of the Eleventh Corps was caused by the attack of Early's 
division from the northeast and by the renewal of the attack by a portion 
of Rodes's division from the north. 



1863] THE LAST STAND 219 

First Corps was indeed critical. Already it was out- 
flanked; half an hour later, twenty minutes later, it 
would be cut off altogether from the rest of the 
army. 

Braced to resist on Seminary Hill, Wadsworth in an 
instant had to readjust himself to the impending neces- 
sity of retreat. In a turmoil of mortification and anger 
he sent word to Doubleday of the new peril, and then 
addressed himself to the work of holding back the enemy, 
whose approaching lines, having dipped down out of sight 
as they crossed Willoughby Run, were now beginning to 
show again over the McPherson ridge. Slowly, before 
this imposing advance, the remnants of Stone's men and 
of the Iron Brigade fell back from the positions about 
the McPherson farm buildings and in the woods which 
they had defended so stoutly. Close upon them came 
two Confederate brigades, commanded by Scales and 
Perrin, marching with wonderful steadiness, aligned as 
if on parade. "In many cases the colors of regiments 
were advanced several paces in front of the line." 1 To 
shatter this attack was imperative, particularly in view 
of the exposed situation of Paul's brigade on the right, 
for which a gain of ten minutes might make the differ- 
ence between capture and safety; but, since the lines of 
blue and gray were in such proximity, there was risk that 
the Federal artillery, if it did not withhold its fire for a 
space, might harm friend as well as foe. Wadsworth, 
near the batteries of Stevens and Stewart, hesitated long 
before giving their commanders the order; he yielded 
only when it was plain that the necessity had become 
paramount and absolute. At this, the crisis of the 
battle, no matter what the cost, the enemy must be 
checked as decisively as he had been checked earlier in 
the day. 

When these broken ranks of blue, avoiding the can- 
ister of the batteries as best they might, had made their 

1 6th Wis., p. 175. 



220 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

way back to the ridge, they once again faced the enemy 
undauntedly. It could not be said that they were un- 
supported. North of the railroad was Stewart himself 
with three of his guns; the other three, commanded by 
Lieutenant Davison, were on the small space of ground 
between the cut and the pike; south of the pike roared 
Stevens's battery. 1 It was against this concentrated fire 
that Scales's brigade was advancing. Buell, the Cannon- 
eer, who served one of the guns in the half-battery com- 
manded by Davison, in the rear of which Wadsworth 
now found himself, has described the scene vividly. To 
obtain an enfilading fire upon Scales's line, Stewart and 
Davison had swung their guns about so that the muz- 
zles faced southwest. "This change of front gave us 
a clean rake along the Rebel line for a whole brigade 
length, but it exposed our right flank to the raking vol- 
leys of their infantry near the pike, who at that moment 
began to get up again and come on. Then for seven 
or eight minutes ensued probably the most desperate 
fight ever waged between artillery and infantry at close 
range without a particle of cover on either side. They 
gave us volley after volley in front and flank, and we 
gave them double canister as fast as we could load. 
The Sixth Wisconsin and Eleventh Pennsylvania men 
crawled up over the bank of the cut or behind the rail 
fence in rear of Stewart's caissons and joined their mus- 
ketry to our canister, while from the north side of the 
cut flashed the chain-lightning of the Old Man's half- 
battery in one solid streak!" 2 

Under this deadly storm the first line of Scales's 
men wavered and fell back; then it rallied and returned 
to the attack with a steady fire of musketry. Stew- 
art's men all the time, in the excitement and inspira- 
tion of the high noon of battle, were working their guns 

1 Stevens's battery expended about fifty-seven rounds of canister in re- 
pelling this attack. — (Maine at Gettysburg, p. 85.) 

2 The Cannoneer, p. 68. 



1863] THE LAST STAND 221 

with the regularity of a machine. Davison, an ankle 
shattered, and with other wounds, too, propped up by 
one of his men, continued to give orders until weakness 
overcame even his "grim, stoical pluck"; then Wads- 
worth, who had been laboring as if one of them, cheered 
them on and held them to their work. So destructive 
was the battery's fire proving that it almost seemed 
that the enemy's charge might fail altogether. 1 But 
the other Confederate brigade, attacking south of the 
seminary, had been successful and had already gained 
possession of that part of the ridge; the Union artillery 
and infantry there were in full retreat. At this moment 
an aide appeared hunting for Wadsworth with the ex- 
pected order from Doubleday to fall back to Cemetery 
Hill. The incorrigible fighter whom he sought was in 
the act of sighting one of Davison's twelve-pounders. 
"Tell General Doubleday," Wadsworth shouted through 
the roar, "that I don't know anything about strategy; 
but we are giving the Rebels hell with these guns, 
and I want to give them a few more shots before we 
leave." 2 

Keen though his battle passion was, Wadsworth 
wrenched himself away, for the moments were nearly all 
told in which the remnant of Union artillery and infan- 
try could slip between the converging Confederates to 
safety. Fortunately, one advantage of the desperate and 
devastating last stand on Seminary Ridge, maintained 
by Doubleday's men with "deliberate valor" as if the 
whole Army of the Potomac were within call, accrued 
to them at once. The Confederate pursuit from the 
west was far from vigorous; its caution verged upon 

1 The commander of this Confederate brigade, General Scales, who was 
himself disabled, reported that all his field-officers but one were killed or 
wounded. — (44 W. R., p. 670.) The brigade lost half its 1,070 men. After 
the war General Scales told Dawes that the fire of Stewart's battery was the 
most destructive he had known in the war. — (0th Wisconsin, p. 175, note.) 

2 See War Papers, Commandery of District of Columbia of the Loyal 
Legion, I, 9. 



222 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

timidity. Skirmishers, it is true, played havoc with the 
Union battery horses and caused the abandonment of 
one gun and some caissons; but the damage from this 
quarter was small, out of all proportion to the men's 
expectation of danger. Generals Lee and A. P. Hill, 
reaching the ridge while the battle smoke was still hang- 
ing in the trees, could perceive that the town was in 
E well's possession; but the sights that the Confeder- 
ate commander had witnessed on the way to the ridge 
and the reports brought to him from Heth's and Pen- 
der's divisions gave him pause. 1 Hill said that he had 
never known the Federals to fight so well. 2 After the 
indomitable resistance of the First Corps, it was hard 
for Lee to dismiss the inference that Meade's army was 
close at hand, and the approach of the Twelfth Corps 
from the southeast during the last moments of the battle 
was a circumstance that highly increased such a proba- 
bility. Whether the inference were correct or not — and 
with his cavalry gone it was impossible to ascertain the 
facts — Lee must give it weight. In view of the impres- 
sion thus produced upon the Confederate commander 
and of the hours gained thereby, the sacrifice made by 
the First Corps was one that added to its glory. Its be- 
lief in the value of this sacrifice was expressed by Wads- 
worth three days later to the commander of the Twenty- 
fourth Michigan. "Colonel Morrow, the only fault I 
find with you is that you fought too long, but God only 
knows what would have become of the Army of the 
Potomac if you had not held the ground as long as you 
did." 3 

1 The six brigades engaged from these two divisions numbered 10,000 
men. The "reports of casualties," which includes also the engagement of 
July 3, gives their loss as 3,962. — (44 W. R., p. 344.) A seventh brigade, 
Lane's, 1,600 strong, of Pender's division, was delayed by the fire of some 
of Buford's cavalry, stationed on Seminary Ridge, south of the Fairfield 
Road. It did not attack, and suffered slight loss.— (44 W. R., p. 667.) 

2 43 W. R., p. 272. His remark was reported to the colonel of the 24th 
Michigan, who was a prisoner. 

3 24th Mich., p. 168. 



1863] CULP'S HILL 223 

Though but haltingly pursued by Hill, the broken 
detachments of the First Corps, picking their way 
through the streets of an unknown town in search of 
a designated place of safety the position of which was 
also unknown, suffered no small loss at the hands of 
EwelFs men, now swarming everywhere. The number 
of prisoners taken from Wadsworth's division was 627, 1 
most of them from Cutler's brigade, which covered the 
retreat. In Robinson's division, of which Paul's bri- 
gade had farther to travel, the loss was even heavier 
(983). Of the 3,500 men whom Wadsworth had taken 
into battle in the morning he had at the end of the 
day less than 1,300. 

The hill toward which the troops of the First and 
Eleventh Corps were now making their way rises by 
a gentle slope from the fields south of Gettysburg. In 
the angle between the converging roads from Emmits- 
burg and Baltimore which meet at its base lay the small 
cemetery of the town. Here, where were posted How- 
ard's scanty reserves, with batteries already protected 
by earthworks, was the nucleus of safety. A bulwark 
even stronger was the presence among the group of offi- 
cers by the cemetery gate of Hancock, sent by Meade to 
take command. His gallant figure was known through- 
out the army, and where he was troops felt that they 
had a true leader. With the aid of other able soldiers, 
such as Buford and Warren, Hancock brought a meas- 
ure of order out of the chaos of artillery and infantry 
that choked the roads and overflowed into the fields. 
An infantry support was needed for Stevens's battery, 
which Hancock had sent to Gulp's Hill, the bold, heav- 
ily wooded eminence a half-mile or less to the east. If 
this hill were not held by the Federals their present 
position would be untenable; yet it was a post of dan- 
ger, for at present there were not troops in sufficient 

1 43 W. R., pp. 173, 174. The total loss of the First Corps in "captured 
or missing" was 2,162. 



224 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

force to occupy it securely, and, in spite of the waning 
day, it was inconceivable that the Confederates should 
not make some attempt to win it. Wadsworth, "by 
no means daunted or weakened by the day's work, but 
. . . still full of fight," 1 was assigned by Hancock to 
this place. While he was gathering up such fragments 
of his division as came to hand, he was gladdened by 
the unexpected appearance of the Seventh Indiana, 
which was the strongest regiment of Cutler's brigade 
and which, detached by Reynolds's order in the morn- 
ing to accompany the First Corps trains, had just ar- 
rived from Emmitsburg. With this increase of five 
hundred men Wadsworth set his troops in motion for 
their new position. An officer who had gone in advance 
to the right to establish the line there encountered on his 
way back a Confederate scout and captured him. The 
scout was hastening to report to Ewell that Culp's Hill 
was unoccupied. 2 With all the greater speed, therefore, 
Wadsworth, when he reached the pleasant groves of the 
hill-side, put his men to work throwing up intrenchments, 
and there was rest for none until the defences were se- 
cure. Fortunately, as the shadows lengthened, Ewell's 
troops opposite Culp's Hill made no sign of attacking, 
and the advance brigades of the Federal Third and 
Twelfth Corps had already reached the field. Behind 
them, from south and southeast, over far-stretched roads, 
the remaining corps of the scattered Army of the Poto- 
mac were hurrying hither; there was time for supper, 
for rest — for the solemn moment of roll-call. 

After the day's ordeal of fire Wadsworth could re- 
joice that all the members of his staff were safe; Craig, 
also, was untouched. In spite of the hail of bullets that 
had beaten upon Stewart's battery in that fierce ten 
minutes, Wadsworth himself had not a scratch. Other- 

1 From a letter of General Morgan, Hancock's chief of staff, quoted by 
Hancock in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1876, p. 330. 

2 Address by General J. W. Hofman. — (Reynolds Memorial, p. 41.) 



18C3] 



WADSWORTH'S LOSS 



225 



wise the tale of disaster was a fearful one. The Twenty- 
fourth Michigan, the largest of Wadsworth's eleven regi- 
ments, went into battle with 49G men; that evening the 
number with the flag was 99. 1 Only four field-officers 
of the Iron Brigade escaped without injury. As the 
men told over the hours of the struggle and noted how 
and where this and that comrade had been lost, there 
was many a story of desperate gallantry. Besides the 
dead, hundreds of wounded men were lying in the Mc- 
Pherson woods and on Seminary Hill beyond the reach 
of all friendly aid and comfort. 2 

War is many-sided in its motives and passions, a 
fact that the aftermath of the First Corps' battle now 
brought forth. Major-General John Newton arrived on 
that very evening, despatched by Meade in haste to 
supersede Doubleday. As it happened, one of the first 
sights witnessed by Howard when he reached the field 
at half-past eleven on the morning of July 1 had been 
the withdrawal of Hall's battery and Cutler's regiments 
from Seminary Hill toward the town — a spectacle which 
prompted him to send a message to Meade that the 
First Corps had fallen back. Later in the day, between 
half-past four and half-past five, Howard, who was not 
a soldier abounding in chivalry and who was smarting 

1 History of the 24th Michigan, p. 180. 

2 The following statement of the strength and losses of Wadsworth's divi- 
sion on July 1 at Gettysburg is computed from the official records, and from 
the figures given in The Iron Brigade at Gettysburg, New York at Gettys- 
burg, and Fox's Regimental Losses. The official statement of losses is for 
all three days of the battle, but as there was hardly any loss at Culp's Hill 
these figures may be considered as holding good for July 1. The 7th Indi- 
ana of Cutler's brigade is not included, as it was not engaged on July 1. 
Its loss is given as ten. 





KILLED 


WOUNDED 


inssraa 

CAPTURED 


TOTAL 
LOSS 


NO. 

ENGAGED 


NO. RE- 
MAINING 


1st Brigade (Iron Brigade) . 


189 
142 


77-1 
506 


249 
349 

598 


1,212 
997 

2,209 


1,883 
1,621 

3,504 


671 

0*4 
500 

1,795 


7th Indiana (not engaged) . 
Total 


331 


1,280 



22(5 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

under the mortification of the retreat of his own corps 
and the presence of Hancock, repeated this misleading 
statement to Hancock, who in his turn communicated 
it to the commanding general; 1 Meade, receiving the 
news at the end of a harassing day, in which the unex- 
pected encounter at Gettysburg had not only shattered 
his plans but imperilled his army, found in Doubleday 
the victim which his temper demanded. The change of 
commanders was not one to approve itself to men who 
had fought under Reynolds. Though Doubleday was 
not a "popular commander," he was respected by his 
men as a hard fighter — and this respect had been much 
increased by his handling of them in the day's battle. 
Newton, on the other hand, came to them unknown; 
and in respect to fighting skill he remained unknown, 
for he never commanded them on the field. 2 

The quiet of that night for the Army of the Potomac 
was succeeded by further respite on the following morn- 
ing and early afternoon. During those hours Meade's 
remaining corps were reaching the field and taking posi- 
tion. Wadsworth's men, lying behind their breastworks 
under the shadow of the oak-trees, waited for the expected 
attack upon their stronghold. As the afternoon wore on 
and they were still unmolested, their thoughts were held 
by the distant roar of the terrific struggle on their left 
which has made memorable the names of Peach Orchard, 
Wheat Field, Devil's Den, Little Round Top. 

1 43 W. R., p. 356. 

2 Newton was displaced by the merging of the First Corps with the 
Fifth in March, 1864. Doubleday left the Army of the Potomac almost 
immediately after the battle of Gettysburg was over and did not serve with 
it again. His bitterness against Meade is shown in his testimony before 
the Committee on the Conduct of the War and in the account of the battle 
in his book, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. It is exhibited without any 
restraint whatever in his narrative of the first day's battle, the MS. of which 
is in the possession of Mr. James W. Wadsworth. Here he declares that 
Meade at first refused to allow him to prepare a report of the fight of July 
1, and that it was only when General Newton refused to make the report 
that Meade permitted Doubleday to do it. The correspondence on p. 256 
of 43 W. R. is indicative of some trouble of this sort. 



1863] SECOND DAY 227 

Suddenly the sound of the beginning of conflict near 
at hand drew back the minds of Wadsworth's men to 
their own situation. They were on the crest of the hill 
facing north. From their right the line ran south and 
had been held by the Twelfth Corps, but the exigencies 
of the contest at the other end of the battle-field had 
caused Meade to order thither all the troops of that 
corps except Greene's brigade. As Greene was endeav- 
oring to stretch his men over the ground from which the 
other brigades had withdrawn, the Confederate attack 
struck his whole line. On Greene's extreme right the en- 
emy had little more to do than to walk into the intrench- 
ments. Nearer the top of the hill his men made a deter- 
mined resistance, but the peril was such that he sent to 
Wadsworth and to Howard for help. These two generals 
rushed off three regiments each, seven hundred and fifty 
men in all, but the fighting value of the two groups proved 
to be by no means equal; "kicked into action," indeed, 
is the expression used by a member of Wadsworth's staff 
in describing the means by which one of Howard's regi- 
ments was brought to perform its duty. At length, re- 
lieved by the returning troops of the Twelfth Corps, 
Wadsworth's and Howard's men went back to their own 
commands. 

Meanwhile, on Wadsworth's left a furious assault by 
Hays's "Louisiana Tigers" and Hoke's brigade had been 
made up the little valley between Cemetery Hill and 
Gulp's Hill. Again the main attack avoided Wadsworth's 
strong position; but with this activity on both sides of 
him he was kept in continual apprehension as to what 
might happen in his own front. During these alarums 
and excursions, Lieutenant-Colonel Kress, having re- 
turned from carrying an order and not finding his com- 
mander, was told that he was out in front of the line, dis- 
mounted. "The ground was covered with trees and was 
steep and rocky," so the aide tells the story now; "I 
also had to dismount, and climbed the embankment and 



228 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

found the general a short distance down the hill, only 
one orderly with him. He was under a lively fire of 
rifles from both front and rear, from enemies and friends. 
Fortunately, it was not difficult to convince him that he 
ought not to remain there long; he said he wanted to 
encourage the men!" 

Again, in the morning of the next day, July 3, there 
was sharp fighting on Wadsworth's right, the result of 
which was to drive the enemy back. After this repulse, 
with little fear that Culp's Hill would again be attacked, 
he could give undivided attention to the marvellous and 
terrible battle drama which that afternoon was to un- 
fold. The prolonged cannonading, the charge of Pick- 
ett's division, the fearful moments of close struggle, the 
drifting back of the gray lines in fragments — these, the 
culminating events of the battle of Gettysburg, both 
from their proportions and from their significance in 
the history of the war, constituted a spectacle the clutch 
of which upon the heart of the beholder was like the 
moment of the death agony. If it should prove that Lee 
had delivered his last blow, then his invasion of the North 
was also proved a failure. 

Nothing is more characteristic of Wadsworth as a 
soldier than his attitude and temper during the period 
of eleven days between Lee's defeat at Gettysburg and 
the successful withdrawal of the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia over the Potomac at Williamsport. 1 The battle 
ardor of the volunteer commander, pushed to its high- 
est intensity by the three days of conflict, demanded 
that the fight should be carried to a finish. The first 
evidence of this spirit in him was seen when, at the time 
of Pickett's charge, he sent an aide to Meade with the 
request that he be allowed to put his division in. When 
the offer reached Meade the attack had been repulsed, 
and Meade, busy with his staff in the work of attending 

1 From this point use the general map at the end of the book. 



1863] NO COUNTER-ATTACK 229 

to the prisoners, replied that they were all right and 
did not need help. Great as was Wadsworth's disap- 
pointment, it took larger proportions when he perceived 
that no counter-attack— the "soul of the defence," in 
Henderson's expressive phrase 1 — was to be made. To 
his mind, the repulse of Lee should at all hazards be 
taken advantage of on the instant. 

Yet Wadsworth could see for himself some of the 
reasons that explained the hesitation of the commanding 
general. "I think," he said in his testimony before the 
Committee on the Conduct of the War, "that General 
Meade did not, perhaps, appreciate fully the complete- 
ness of his victory. The terrible slaughter of our men 
produced, of course, a great impression upon the officers 
of our army. General Meade's head-quarters were al- 
most in the line of battle, and were surrounded by great 
havoc." 2 The dead to be buried were numbered by 
thousands, the wounded to be cared for by tens of thou- 
sands. Furthermore, such of the survivors as were not 
exhausted by hard fighting were exhausted by hard 
marching. The need of supplies was immediate and 
imperative, the trains were remote. In the Sixth Wis- 
consin, for instance, the men had nothing to eat from 
the morning of July 3 to the evening of the next day; 
futhermore, nearly half of them were barefoot. 3 But 
the most powerful reason of all to urge Meade to cau- 
tion was the difficulty of ascertaining and comprehend- 
ing the extent of the damage suffered by the enemy. 
In default of that knowledge, he whose command of the 
Army of the Potomac was but a week old could not 
escape the magic of Lee's great name. Though deter- 
mined on pursuit, Meade dared do nothing to bring on 

1 Stonewall Jackson, I, 173. 

s C. W., Report of 1865, 1, 415. "There was a tone amongst most of the 
prominent officers that we had quite saved the county for the time and that 
we had done enough; that we might jeopard all that we had won by trying 
to do too much." — (General Warren's testimony, ibid., 378.) 

3 6th Wisconsin, pp. 160, 185. 



230 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

a general engagement. He was therefore stopped from 
following the Confederates by the passes through the 
South Mountain range, which they had used to reach 
the Cumberland Valley, and obliged to proceed first 
south along the east side of the ridge to Middletown 
and then west over South Mountain by the National 
Pike— a route considerably longer than the one that they 
had taken. Thus the first chance to strike at Lee in re- 
treat was lost. 

On July 4 detachments of men were upon the field 
succoring the wounded, burying the dead, and collecting 
arms. From the hour of noon the rain came down in 
torrents. Wadsworth took advantage of this day of 
rest to write his report of the battle of July 1. It is 
brief, as the products of his pen always were, but clear, 
consistent, and accurate. A characteristic touch occurs 
at the end. "The officers of my staff and command 
performed their whole duty without an exception. Un- 
der these circumstances I cannot particularly commend 
any of them without doing injustice to others equally 
meritorious." * This method of rendering justice at the 
expense of individual fame did not, it is hardly neces- 
sary to say, meet with the approval of all the officers in 
question. 

On July 5 the Army of the Potomac began to move 
in pursuit of Lee; but it was not till the following day 
that Wadsworth's division and the First Corps marched. 
Once begun, the advance of the army was sufficiently 
energetic, though, as a result of the frequent and copious 
rains during the last fortnight, the heavy roads prevented 
it from being rapid. That night the First Corps en- 
camped, after a ten-mile march, at Emmitsburg. The 
next day brought it within a short distance of Middle- 
town, a hard march of over twenty-two miles. In crossing 
the Catoctin ridge the road was so rough and narrow that 
the men were frequently obliged to march in single file. 

1 43 W. R., p. 267. 



1863] AT WILLIAMSPORT 231 

On July 8 the First Corps crossed South Mountain 
and bivouacked on its western flank near Boonesboro 
(eight miles) . Even the macadamized National Road was 
in bad condition, and Meade was forced to allow a whole 
day for the corps at the rear of his column to get up; 
rations and shoes, too, must be distributed to hungry 
and barefoot men, and worn-out horses must be shod. 
But Confederates as well as Federals suffered from the 
downpourings of the heavens. The Potomac had risen un- 
precedentedly, and Lee, reaching Williamsport and Fall- 
ing Waters, where he expected to cross, found not only 
his bridge burned by the Federal cavalry but the stream 
swollen several feet above the fording stage. Not a 
dozen miles distant from the assembled Army of the 
Potomac was the great Confederate commander, caught 
at last, it would seem, with the raging river in his rear. 

Again the Union army nerved itself for battle. Its 
physical condition was mended somewhat: reinforce- 
ments had arrived; Lincoln, the whole North behind 
him, urged it on. If now, with Vicksburg captured, 
Lee's army might be destroyed, the Confederacy could 
not long survive. 

On July 10 Meade set his army in motion for what 
he believed must be "the decisive battle of the war"; 
yet considerations of weight prevented him from push- 
ing forward with ardor and relentlessness. He could ill 
afford, he felt, to sacrifice or even to prejudice the re- 
sults of the victory just won; it was still on the cards 
that the daring Confederate commander might issue 
forth to attack him. "I desire," Meade wrote to Hal- 
leck on July 9, "to adopt such measures as in my judg- 
ment will tend to insure success, even though these may 
be deemed tardy." x Consequently, the operations of 
the next two days were governed by his purpose to 
"advance cautiously." At the end of that time his army 
was astride Antietam Creek, the left being advanced to 
1 43 W. R., p. 86. 



232 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

within striking distance of the enemy. "On the morn- 
ing of the 12th of July," such is the testimony of 
General A. A. Humphreys, Meade's chief of staff, " Gen- 
eral Meade expressed to me his views, which were to 
move the army forward and feel the enemy, and to at- 
tack them at such points as he should find it best to 
attack. We knew something of the general character 
of their position, but it was a very general knowledge. 
General Meade asked my opinion. I replied that I co- 
incided with him; that I was in favor of the operation 
that he proposed, the advance of the army and a recon- 
noissance in force, as it is called, to be converted into 
an attack. We could not see the position of the enemy 
well; their skirmishers acted as a sort of curtain, to 
keep us from looking too closely at them. A circular 
note was therefore sent to corps commanders to meet 
at eight o'clock in the evening at general head-quarters; 
they were to be brought there for the purpose of receiv- 
ing instructions and to give all the information they 
had collected during the day concerning the position of 
the enemy, etc." 1 At this council of the seven corps 
commanders of the Army of the Potomac, Wadsworth 
was present as representing the First Corps, General 
Newton being temporarily incapacitated and General 
Doubleday, wounded at Gettysburg in body as well 
as in spirit, having left the army. Besides Meade and 
Humphreys and these seven, there were present, crowded 
into the head-quarters tent, Warren, the chief engineer 
of the army, and Pleasonton, the chief of cavalry. Of 
the momentous discussion which then took place there 
is abundant record, six of the eleven men having later 
appeared before the inquisitorial Committee on the Con- 
duct of the War. Since their testimony agrees in sub- 
stance, though with much variety of interesting detail, 
the story of what happened may be told in Wadsworth's 
own words: 

1 C. W., Report of 1865, I, 395. 



1863] WADSWORTH'S TESTIMONY 233 

General Meade stated briefly the condition of our 
forces, giving his estimate of our army and the best 
information he had as to the numbers of the enemy, 
stating, as I think, that he believed we were superior 
to them in numbers, and he asked the corps commanders, 
commencing with the ranking officer, General Sedgwick, 
what they thought of the expediency of attacking the 
enemy the next morning. General Sedgwick, General 
Slocum, General Sykes, General French, and General 
Hays, who was temporarily commanding the Second 
Corps, pronounced decidedly against the attack. Gen- 
eral Howard, General Pleasonton, and myself advised 
the attack. General Meade stated that he favored an 
attack; that he came there to fight the enemy and did 
not see any good reason why he should not fight them. 
But he said he could not take the responsibility of bring- 
ing on a general engagement against the advice of his 
commanders. 

It will be observed that four of the officers who op- 
posed the attack were the ranking officers of the army, 
next to General Meade, and held in every respect the 
highest positions in the army. The reasons for and 
against an attack were not discussed for some time, and 
I believe not until I asked that those generals who op- 
posed the attack should state their reasons for it. Gen- 
eral Sedgwick did not give at any length his reasons 
against an attack, but stated generally that General 
Meade had won a great victory, and he thought he ought 
not to jeopard all he had gained by another battle at 
that time. General Sykes and General French gave as 
a reason for not making an attack, as nearly as I can 
remember, that there was nothing between the enemy 
and Washington except our army, and that if it was 
overwhelmed Washington and Baltimore would be open 
to the enemy. 

Question. Was not that true? 

Ansiver. There was no force of any moment but that 
army, not enough to have resisted General Lee. Gen- 
eral Warren, the engineer officer of General Meade's 
staff, made a strong and able argument in favor of an 
attack; and General Pleasonton likewise urged an at- 
tack. General Howard, who had voted for an attack, 
did not enter much into the discussion. I did not my- 
self, except to meet the objection that there was nothing 



234 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

between the enemy and Washington but our army, which 
I did by urging that our line of breastworks, the Antie- 
tam creek, and South Mountain gave us defensive lines, 
where we could certainly hold the enemy if repulsed in 
our assault; and that we had every reason to believe 
that the enemy were demoralized by their retreat and 
were short of ammunition. Some of the officers — I do 
not recollect whom — took the ground that the enemy 
would attack us if we did not attack them. I said that 
I did not believe that the enemy had ever come there 
to fight a battle; that so good an officer as General Lee 
never would take a position with his back on the river 
to fight a battle. 1 

The vote of the corps commanders being five to two 
against making an attack, the council broke up, with the 
understanding that they were, during the next twenty- 
four hours, to endeavor to gain further information as 
to the enemy's position and strength. "I was waiting 
in a hard rain on that dismal night to guide General 
Wadsworth back to our head-quarters," writes Colonel 
Meneely, "and I do not think that I ever heard any 
person in high position express so much regret at a posi- 
tive mistake [such] as was made by the meeting and where 
different action had such splendid promise of success." 
The proposed reconnoissance in force that had been 
under discussion was not to be converted into a battle 
unless circumstances warranted it; yet the men whose 
words had weight because of their rank were all against 
it. They were willing to risk nothing. Warren and 
Humphreys, with their keen minds and fresh energy, 
indomitable fighters both as well as accomplished offi- 
cers, had grasped the situation, but they were juniors 
and staff officers and had no vote. If Reynolds, now 
dead, if Hancock and Sickles, both wounded, could have 
been of the council, the result must have been different. - 

"C. W., 1865, I, 415, 416. 

2 Wadsworth, Howard, and Pleasonton were in error in supposing Lee 
without ammunition but right in supposing that he was trying to escape at 
the first opportunity. The error of the other corps commanders was in 
thinking that Lee was likely to attack. "I still think," testified General 



1863] LEE'S ESCAPE 235 

The information gathered on the next day was, owing 
to the thick weather, of little decisive value. In front 
of the First Corps, so Wadsworth reported, the line of 
the enemy was a mile distant. The ground rose gradu- 
ally from the Federal position to heavy woods on the 
edge of which the Confederates were intrenched. 1 Else- 
where, too, it appeared they were strongly posted. In 
spite of the reports, either vague or unfavorable, from 
his commanders, and in spite of the vote of the council, 
Meade now decided upon action. The pressure from 
Washington was becoming more and more insistent; 
failure to advance to the attack would there be counted 
as much against him as defeat in case of actual battle. 
At nine o'clock that evening, therefore, he finally is- 
sued orders for the reconnoissance in force, the move- 
ment to begin at seven the next morning, July 14. But 
when the Union troops, so long held back, moved for- 
ward, they found the Confederate pickets withdrawn; 
the intrenchments behind which Lee's worn and wasted 
veterans had made such an imposing show of strength 
were empty. During the night, thanks to the rapidly 
subsiding river and to a rebuilt pontoon bridge, Lee had 
begun his retreat; it was accomplished during the next 
forenoon with only slight loss. The Maryland cam- 
paign was ended. 2 

Humphreys before the Committee on the Conduct of the War (1865, I, 397) 
"that it would have been better to have made the reconnoissance in force, 
and have made an attack if we had found some parts of the enemy's line 
were not as strong as others. We might, perhaps, have found toward the 
right that we could have attacked them. It was very strong ground, and 
if we had made an attack there is no doubt that we shoidd have lost very 
severely. But I cannot pretend to say now whether, if I had seen all that 
ground, I should or should not have counselled an attack. It would have 
been right for us to have made that reconnoissance in force and to have 
been guided afterwards by the developments made by that reconnoissance." 

1 45 W. R., p. 674. 

" The slowness of a part of Meade's army in marching forward on the 
morning of July 14 is worth noting. The withdrawal of Lee's pickets was not 
discovered on the left till half-past seven. Buford, in command of the cavalry 
there, then went in pursuit, but none of the infantry on the left apparently 
made any attempt to follow the enemy toward Falling Waters, where Hill's 



236 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

This fiasco at Williamsport seemed an ignoble sequel 
to the glory of Gettysburg, and for once Wadsworth 
was out of conceit with war. As usual he was prompt 
to act upon his feeling. General Newton, having re- 
covered from his disability, was again in command of 
the First Corps; Wadsworth's own division had less 
than a brigade's strength; and as he had always con- 
tended that there were in the army too many general 
officers there was at this juncture every reason why he 
should ask to be relieved. His request was at once 
granted and he started forthwith for Washington. 

Arrived at the capital, Wadsworth soon made his 
way to the White House, his appearance there being 
the cause of the following entry in the diary of Lin- 
coln's young secretary, John Hay: 

July 16. . . . This evening at tea was talking with 
Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander and Judge Whiting. They 
agreed in ascribing vast importance to the crushing of 
Lee at Williamsport. . . . 

General Wadsworth came in. He said in answer to 
Alexander's question, "Why did he escape?" "Because 
nobody stopped him," rather gruffly. Wadsworth says 
that at a council of war of corps commanders, held on 
Sunday the 12th, he was present, on account of sick- 
ness of his corps commander, he, Wadsworth, being tem- 
porarily in command of the corps. On the question of 
fight or no fight the weight of authority was against 
fighting. French, Sedgwick, Slocum, and [Sykes and 
Hays] strenuously opposed a fight. Meade was in favor 
of it. So was Warren, who did most of the talking 
on that side, and Pleasonton was very eager for it, as 
was also Wadsworth himself. The non-fighters thought 
or seemed to think that if we did not attack, the enemy 
would; and even Meade thought he was in for action, 

and Longstreet's corps were crossing during the forenoon. When Buford 
reached Lee's rear guard at Falling Waters he found that Kilpatrick's cav- 
alry, coming from Meade's right flank by way of Williamsport, had arrived 
before him. Kilpatrick had discovered the withdrawal of the pickets on the 
right at three o'clock.— (43 W. R., p. 990.) 



1863] LEE'S ESCAPE 237 

had no idea that the enemy intended to get away at 
once. Howard had little to say on the subject. 

Meade was in favor of attacking in three columns of 
twenty thousand men each. Wads worth was in favor of 
doing as Stonewall Jackson did at Chancellorsville— double 
up the left and drive them down on VVilliamsport. Wads- 
worth said to Hunter, who sat beside him, "General, 
there are a good many officers of the regular army who 
have not yet entirely lost the West Point ideas of South- 
ern superiority. 1 That sometimes accounts for an other- 
wise unaccountable slowness of attack." 2 

The chagrin felt by some of those who first learned 
that Lee had given his antagonist the slip has been 
described by Noah Brooks, the newspaper correspondent, 
who, having reached the army on the morning of July 
14, had pressed on to Falling Waters. "Meade's head- 
quarters, on my return, presented a chap-fallen appear- 
ance. Here I met Vice-President Hamlin. ... As we 
met, he raised his hands and turned away his face with 
a gesture of despair. Later on I came across General 
Wadsworth, who almost shed tears while he talked to us 
about the escape of the rebel army." 3 

It is easy, of course, to disparage Wadsworth's opin- 
ion concerning what should have been the battle of Will- 
iamsport, to say that his judgment was not that of a 
professional soldier, to bring into court the evidence that 
we now possess of the strength of Lee's position and his 
willingness to receive attack; yet the point of the mat- 
ter is that Lee's unmolested escape into Virginia was the 
natural outcome of a series of causes all having their 
spring, as Lincoln put it, in "a purpose to get the enemy 
across the river again without a further collision," rather 

1 On July 17,fl863, Sedgwick, explaining to his sister why Meade had not 
attacked Lee at Williamsport, wrote: "I am tired of risking my corps in 
such unequal contests." — (Correspondence of Major-General John Sedg- 
wick, II, 132.) Sedgwick also says (p. 135) that Newton, though not pres- 
ent at the council, was known to be against the proposed attack. 

2 This extract has been supplied by the kindness of Mrs. John Hay. 

3 Washington in Lincoln's Time, p. 95. 



238 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

than in "a purpose to prevent his crossing and to de- 
stroy him." ' In Wadsworth's case, the failure to fight 
at Williamsport provoked exasperation because it was 
the culminating instance of an attitude that he, with 
his impulsive ardor and singleness of vision, could not 
comprehend. In his conception, to be a soldier meant 
to use the strength of an army to the utmost and with- 
out relenting in order that the enemy might be crippled 
and overcome. This belief, too, was no mere matter 
of temperament; it was the conviction of a man who, 
knowing the value of energy and efficiency in the con- 
duct of affairs, assumed that those qualities were of 
universal applicability. The situation, as it seemed to 
him, must be met as a man of high financial courage 
would meet a panic in the world of business. While the 
time of stress prevails, no moment must be lost, no 
thought left uncanvassed, no deed undone that will con- 
tribute even in the smallest degree to the desired result. 
It was because Meade's generals — and to a certain ex- 
tent Meade himself — seemed to regard the crisis as al- 
ready past, seemed not to be straining every nerve to 
deal Lee another blow, that Wadsworth blamed them 
as he did. Gettysburg, observes Henderson, "was pre- 
eminently a battle of lost opportunities," 2 and the scope 
of his remark may well be extended to include the re- 
mainder of the campaign. 3 

> Lincoln to Halleck — (45 W. R., p. 567.) 

2 Stonewall Jackson, II, 488. 

3 Of the situation at Williamsport Major-General George B. Davis writes: 
"On the Confederate side a desperate chance was taken, not justified by 
the strength and situation of the opposing armies; not warranted even by 
the cautious and sluggish temperament of the Union commander. The 
management of the Army of the Potomac was halting, dilatory, wanting in 
firm direction, and, to a degree, irresolute and unskilful. An opportunity 
such as rarely occurs in war presented itself and was not availed of; and the 
Army of Northern Virginia was permitted to escape from a situation which 
should have gone far to compass its defeat, if not its utter discomfiture." — 
(From Gettysburg to Williamsport, Military Historical Society of Massa- 
chusetts Papers, III, 469.) 




STATUE OF BRIGADIER-GENERAL JAMES S. WADSWORTH. 
To be erected at Gettysburg by the State of New York. 

From a photograph of the scale model hy R. Hinton Perry. 






CHAPTER VIII 
BETWEEN BATTLES 

Release from the Army of the Potomac did not for 
Wadsworth mean release from active devotion to the 
cause of the Union. The firmness and skill which, as 
military governor of Washington, he had shown in es- 
tablishing and protecting the freedmen in their new 
rights now made him of value to the administration as 
adviser in the unfamiliar fields which its policy of eman- 
cipation had obliged it to enter. 

During the first half of the year 1863 the work of 
arming the blacks had progressed notably in spite of 
conservative opposition. In Massachusetts, Governor 
Andrew had raised two regiments of volunteers; in the 
Southwest the task of organizing the regiments that were 
eventually designated United States Colored Troops was 
under the personal charge of Adjutant-General Lorenzo 
Thomas. On that evening in July when the men of the 
Fifty-fourth Massachusetts followed their devoted colo- 
nel, Robert Gould Shaw, up the battlements of Fort 
Wagner, they proved once for all the fighting quality of 
their race. 

But the negro who could thus be brought under arms 
to serve the nation in what had now become a war for 
freedom as well as for union constituted only one part 
of the problem that the government had on its hands. 
The care of the negro laborer and his family was becom- 
ing a work as urgent and important in the Mississippi 
Valley as Wadsworth had found it in the District of 
Columbia in 1862, and after the surrender of Vicks- 
burg on July 4, 1863, it assumed proportions of greater 



240 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

magnitude than ever. Both the plantations and the 
freedmen who had worked them were now under control 
of the national government, and every consideration of 
expediency and necessity required that, as soon as pos- 
sible, some system be put into effect adequate to the 
exigencies of the new times. 

In addressing themselves to this complicated busi- 
ness, Lincoln and Stanton were not without informa- 
tion, though much of it was so incomplete, so confused, 
and so prejudiced as to form an unsafe basis for judg- 
ment. They had the jaunty and bustling reports of the 
peripatetic adjutant-general, who, if rumor is to be be- 
lieved, had been sent on this mission chiefly to get him 
out of harm's — that is, out of Stanton's — way, and who 
recommended the reasonableness of the new policy of 
arming the blacks by sending to the guard-house such 
soldiers as, when invited by him to express their opin- 
ions, ventured to differ from him in regard to it. 1 From 
the military commanders also came official communica- 
tions, and when Grant sent his superintendent of contra- 
bands, Chaplain John Eaton, to Washington to report 
in person, the information obtained was of the highest 
value. Furthermore, the American Freedmen's Inquiry 
Commission, consisting of Robert Dale Owen, James Mc- 
Kaye, and Samuel G. Howe, appointed by Stanton in 
March, 1803, had in June made a preliminary report 
and was now industriously pursuing its investigations. 
Lastly, the authorities at Washington had the benefit 
of the advice, admonitions, and importunities of North- 
ern friends of the negro. In this multitude of counsel- 
lors there was less wisdom than confusion; and so, in 
the early autumn, when the success of the draft had 
been but moderate and when the President was about 
to issue a call for three hundred thousand volunteers, 
when, too, in view of the approaching session of Con- 
gress, it was desirable for the administration to deter- 

1 Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen, p. 55. 



1863] WADSWORTHS PAY 241 

mine what kind of measure for the management of the 
freedmen's affairs it wished to have passed, — at this time 
it was decided to send Wadsworth to the Mississippi 
Valley to look into and to report upon the condition both 
of the colored troops there and of the non-military part 
of the negro population. In this wise Lincoln and Stan- 
ton hoped to gain what they needed to know in order 
to deal skilfully with the batteries of congressmen and 
committees that were sure to assail them during the 
coming winter. 

Wadsworth's instructions from Stanton, dated Octo- 
ber 9, 1863, ordered him to begin his inspection at Cairo, 
Illinois, and to proceed thence down the Mississippi to 
New Orleans, going elsewhere, too, if he found it de- 
sirable. 1 Being authorized to take one of his aides with 
him, he chose Captain T. E. Ellsworth, who had served 
on his staff ever since the early days of his military gov- 
ernorship. 

Here belongs — to interrupt for a moment the course 
of the main narrative — a story told by the paymaster of 
the army from whom, since the beginning of the war, 
Wadsworth had received his pay. This official, supply- 
ing him with cash for his journey, recommended to him 
Paymaster Vedder at New Orleans as a person from 
whom he could obtain further sums if necessary. "No, 
sir," replied Wadsworth, "I shall not apply to Major 
Vedder. While I am in the service I shall be paid only 
by you. And my reason for that is that I wish my ac- 
count with the government to be kept with one pay- 
master only; for it is my purpose at the close of the 
war to call on you for an accurate statement of all the 
money I have received from the United States. The 
amount, whatever it is, I shall give to some permanent 
institution founded for the life relief of disabled soldiers. 
This is the least invidious way in which I can refuse 
pay for fighting for my country in her hour of danger." 2 

1 124 W. R., p. 872. * Neio York Tribune, June 13, 1864. 



242 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Having completed his inspection at Cairo, where he 
found one hundred and twenty-five freedmen employed 
as laborers in the quartermaster's and commissary de- 
partments, receiving ten dollars a month and a ration 
as well as partial provision for their families, Wadsworth 
started down the river to meet Adjutant-General Thomas 
at Vicksburg. The latter placed his own steam-boat at 
Wadsworth's disposal and accompanied him as far as 
New Orleans. They stopped at Natchez, Port Hudson, 
and Baton Rouge to inspect camps and leased planta- 
tions, and Wadsworth made investigations at several 
places below New Orleans. 1 In the latter part of Novem- 
ber he started on his return journey, making the trip 
by sea, and arriving in Washington on December 3. 

The recruiting of colored troops Wadsworth found 
going forward, indeed, though in somewhat irregular 
fashion. At various points up and down the river were 
nuclei of regiments, some of which were growing steadily 
and others of which were at a stand-still, according to 
the ability and zeal of their officers. There was no sys- 
tem for designating these commands, and the adjutant- 
general, whatever his authority, had been more success- 
ful in getting the work under way than in unifying and 
controlling it. Though Wadsworth obtained consolidated 
reports showing the strength of the regiments recruiting 
in the Department of Tennessee and the Department 
of the Gulf, he had no certainty that the lists were com- 
plete or that the figures were accurate. In all, he made 
out about twenty thousand men, scattered through some- 
thing like thirty-five regiments. 2 Of course the troops 
were untried and untrained, but in this respect it was 
as with their numerical strength: whenever a command 

1 Thomas to Stanton.— (124 W. R., p. 1044.) 

2 Between the lists furnished to Wadsworth and that given by Stanton's 
report (Senate Document, 38 Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 56, 57) there are great 
discrepancies in the designations of the regiments, in the names of their 
commanders, and in their numerical strength. In general, Wadsworth's 
figures run lower than the printed ones. 



1863] CONDITION OF THE NEGROES 243 

was fortunate in its officers the men responded to the 
stimulus of their new discipline, which was for them the 
gateway to the land of freedom. 

Though at the present stage confusion existed in the 
organization of the colored troops, the work had been 
started right and there was little in the situation that 
time would not untangle. But with the non-military 
part of the population the case was far otherwise. Even 
if the freedmen had known how to take care of them- 
selves, they had nothing to begin with, and most of 
the experiments made for their welfare had been bun- 
gled. If they were gathered into camps and fed on the 
unaccustomed army ration, they sickened and died at 
an alarming rate; if they were hired out to work on 
plantations leased from the government, they were in 
most cases heartlessly exploited by the lessees, whose 
loyalty was all too likely to prove a feebler passion 
than their greed. Where a man like Chaplain Eaton 
was in control the state of things was better, but men 
such as he were few and the circle of their influence 
was small. The conditions against which they had to 
contend were the inevitable result of the breaking up 
of slavery; not in a year, not even in a generation, was 
the heritage of that evil to be blotted out. 

By what he had seen on this trip, brief though it 
was, Wadsworth had not merely brought himself abreast 
of the hour touching a subject which with each new 
month took on a fresh aspect; he had so corrected and 
fortified the judgments drawn from his experience with 
the negro in 1862 that they carried the weight not only 
of his force of character but of their own soundness as 
well. Though as a soldier the negro had revealed sur- 
prising capacity, that pathway of advance could not 
carry him far, for the war must soon be brought to an 
end. The profound problem, Wadsworth felt, was that 
of the negro's economic and political status, a field full of 
puzzles and pitfalls and one in which, as it later proved, 
experience was destined to run sharply athwart theory. 



244 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Complicated and baffling though the question was, it 
rang a note of challenge that roused in Wadsworth all 
his zeal as an anti-slavery man, an agriculturist, and an 
administrator. If the call should come to him to serve 
in this field, he was ready to answer with all his heart. 
One cannot but echo the judgment of his friend, Gu- 
rowski: "With his purity, with his clear-sightedness, 
and with his great practical sense, Wadsworth would 
have been the man to direct on a large scale organiza- 
tion of the freedmen." ' 

For this organization, it is worth noting, he had al- 
ready formed a plan of his own. According to Gurow- 
ski, "Wadsworth's idea was to organize the freedmen 
into self-sustaining and self-defending agricultural colo- 
nies, locating them on confiscated and on new, hitherto 
uncultivated lands. Wadsworth was altogether averse 
to hiring out the freedmen as laborers; he considered 
it as a perpetuation of slavery, disguised with another 
name. Of course Wadsworth recognized the necessity 
of appointing directors, who were to preside, to organize, 
and to direct the labor of the colonists." 2 This proposal, 
of course, is merely another form of Lincoln's favorite 
scheme of colonization; also, it calls to mind James 
Wadsworth's proposal that the Indians should be re- 
moved from proximity to the race which made use of 
its superiority to oppress and to degrade them and 
should find in the undeveloped regions of the West an 
opportunity to grow unhampered toward civilization and 
citizenship. Whatever the intrinsic merits of this method 
of dealing with the freedmen, its advantages were not 
sufficiently obvious to enable it to make its way against 
the fierce passions of the Reconstruction period; more- 
over, when that period came its two strongest champions 
were no longer living to urge its adoption. 3 

1 Gurowski's Diary, 1863-65, p. 374. ; Ibid., p. 375. 

3 In Arnold's Lincoln and Slavery, p. 656; Carpenter's Six Months at 
the White House, p. 270; and in the Gettysburg edition of Nicolay and Hay's 
Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, XI, 130, is printed a letter dealing 
with the future treatment of the negro which purports to have been written 



1864] COURT OF INQUIRY 245 

Having made his representations at the War De- 
partment and at the White House, Wadsworth was 
given a leave of absence which lasted over Christmas 
and New Year's day. On January 9, 1864, he was de- 
tailed to serve on a court of inquiry to investigate the 
conduct of Generals McCook, Crittenden, and Negley, 
who, in the rout at Chickamauga, after the Confederates 
had attacked and dispersed their commands, had left 
the field. This duty took Wadsworth to Nashville and 
Louisville and occupied the greater part of the month 
of February. The result of the inquiry was an exon- 
eration of all three of the generals. 1 

Two letters on matters of family concern may be 
introduced here, though chronologically the place of the 
second is somewhat later. The first is to Wadsworth's 
youngest son: 

Louisville, Feb. 8, 1864. 

My Dear Son: — 

I rec d some days since your letter by the way of 
Nashville. I am very glad to hear that you have made 
a satisfactory arrangement for prosecuting your studies 
at N. Haven, and that you have gone at your work with 
good courage. You will never regret the sacrifices you 

by Lincoln to Wadsworth at about this time, but the genuineness of which 
is not vouched for. The occasion of the letter, if it is genuine, was a ques- 
tion from Wadsworth whether, " in the event of our complete success in the 
field, the same being followed by a loyal and cheerful submission on the 
part of the South, . . . universal amnesty should not be accompanied by uni- 
versal suffrage." The gist of Lincoln's reply is in the sentence: "I cannot 
see, if universal amnesty be granted, how, under the circumstances, I can 
avoid exacting in return universal suffrage, or, at least, suffrage on the basis 
of intelligence and military service." 

1 For the records of the court, see 50 W. R., pp. 930-1053. 

Another possibility of service for Wadsworth was in connection with 
Lincoln's plans for Florida, and resembled that which Wadsworth had con- 
sidered in 1862. (See p. 153.) The President's proposal was to appoint a 
military governor who was to develop the Union sentiment that was be- 
lieved to exist there, and the scope of whose command was to be extended 
with the advance of the Union troops. The scheme came to naught through 
various untoward circumstances, chief among them being the defeat of the 
Federal army at Olustee on February 20, 1864. If things had gone will, 
Wadsworth would undoubtedly have received the appointment. — (Letter 
of Colonel Meneely.) 



246 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

make now to secure a good education. I have often 
deeply regretted that my own education was so defi- 
cient, especially in the classics. It has been a great bar- 
rier to my progress in other studies, especially the nat- 
ural sciences, which I could not master thoroughly from 
want of some knowledge of the languages from which 
the technical terms were derived. I hope you will re- 
solve to stick to it until you master them. Tho' if I 
get a command I shall keep my promise and take you 
with me. 1 There is now little or no prospect of this 
coming to pass. This court is a very tedious affair. 
It will keep us here for two weeks longer certainly, per- 
haps even longer. It is a much less interesting busi- 
ness than we had in the Miss'. . . . 

I hope you will be careful as to what acquaintances 
you make — & what company you keep. Now is the 
time for study. The harder you work the sooner it will 
be over, and the sooner we shall all be together at our 
dear home, where we have so much to interest and 
amuse us. If you get into gay company & neglect your 
studies it will only add a year or two to your exile. . . . 
Your affectionate Father, 

JA a S. WADSWORTH. 



ClJLPEPER, VA. 

Apl. 7, 1864. 

Dear Miss Burden: — 

I have just reed, a letter from my son informing 
me that he has offered you his hand and heart, and that 
you have referred him to your father. Without waiting 
for his decision, which however must of course be con- 
clusive, allow me to assure you that no event could give 
us more pleasure than to welcome you to our family, and 
that Mrs. Wadsworth and myself would find our great- 
est joy in watching over your happiness. You have al- 
ready made quite as complete a conquest of Mrs. W. as 
of our dear Charlie. Before she was aware that he was 
interested in you, she spoke of you to me in the highest 
terms. 

It is not for us to speak of our son except to tell 

1 In November, 1864, James W. Wadsworth was appointed aide on the 
staff of Major-General G. K. Warren, under whom he served until the end 
of the war, receiving then a "brevet- major" for services at Five Forks. 



1864] GRANT LIEUTENANT-GENERAL 247 

you of his faults, and I must accordingly say to you, 
for there should be no concealment in such a case, that 
you are not his first love — tho' I am sure you are his 
second. He has been for some years devotedly and ten- 
derly attached to Iron. If any one could wean him 
from this passion and make him think a little more of 
science, literature, and cultivated society, I think they 
would make a very good fellow of him. I am sure you 
can do this good work better than any one else. 

I can only say further, dear Miss Burden, that if 
your destinies should be united with those of our son, 
you will divide with him the parental care and affection 
with which we have watched over him, and which he 
has always dutifully returned. 

With great respect and regard, 
truly yrs, 

JAS. S. WADSWORTH. 

While Wadsworth was sitting through the long ses- 
sions of the court at Louisville, events were occurring at 
Washington which changed his fears to hopes and fixed 
his fate. Congress revived the grade of lieutenant- 
general; Grant, the hero of Vicksburg and Chattanooga, 
was nominated to the position, and on March 10 was 
assigned by the President to the command of all the 
armies of the United States. The days of Halleck's ped- 
antry and indecision were over; concert of action on 
the part of the forces operating against the Confederacy 
was now assured. Under such fortunate auspices it was 
reasonable to believe that the campaign of the coming 
spring would end the war. A mighty push against Rich- 
mond, made as Grant could make it, must, it would 
seem, prove more than Lee's weakened army could with- 
stand. The thought of fighting under Grant, a leader 
not sparing of conflict, brought all Wadsworth's battle 
ardor back in full flood; in this final forward movement 
he longed to bear a part, to lead once more into battle 
his loved brigades of the old First Division. To this end 
the splendid record which he and they had made at 
Gettysburg now did him good advocate's service at the 



248 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

War Department. Manifestly, one fighter such as he, 
as Grant said of him later, was worth a whole brigade, 
and in the coming campaign there was to be no lack of 
hard fighting. Accordingly his request was granted, and 
on March 15 he was ordered to report to General Meade 
for assignment to duty with the Army of the Potomac. 1 
When they heard the news, Wadsworth's family and 
friends, likewise remembering that record at Gettysburg, 
felt that his days were numbered. 

1 107 W. R., p. 1151. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WILDERNESS 

A Battle-field, too, is great. Considered well, it is a kind of Quin- 
tessence of Labor; Labor distilled into its utmost concentration; the 
significance of years of it compressed into an hour. Here too thou 
shalt be strong, and not in muscle only if thou wouldst prevail. Here 
too thou shalt be strong of heart, noble of soul; thou shalt dread no 
pain or death, thou shalt not love ease or life." 

— Carlyle — Past and Present, book iii, chapter x. 

Meade's orders of March 25, 1864, assigned Wadsworth 
to the command of the Fourth Division of the Fifth Corps, 
under Major-General G. K. Warren. This corps, with 
the Second under Hancock and the Sixth under Sedg- 
wick, constituted the Army of the Potomac. It lay in 
winter quarters in the vicinity of Culpeper Court House, 
north of the Rapidan and along the line of the railroad 
from the Rappahannock to Manassas Junction. The 
Ninth Corps, under Burnside, which, rendezvousing at 
Annapolis, was receiving additions, mostly of raw troops, 
was designed to act with it in the coming campaign, 
though remaining an independent command and receiv- 
ing orders direct from Grant. 

In all the preparations which filled the first weeks of 
the spring there were many signs that the war hence- 
forth was to be conducted on a professional basis; that 
non-military considerations were no longer to be allowed 
to interfere with whatever made for efficiency. With 
this spirit prevailing at head-quarters, it is significant of 
the esteem entertained for so unprofessional a soldier 
as Wadsworth that Hancock, Warren, and Sedgwick 
should each have asked to have him as a division com- 

249 



250 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

mander. 1 That he was assigned to Warren was due to the 
fact that one of the divisions in the Fifth Corps con- 
tained the two brigades which Wadsworth had commanded 
the year before. The Iron Brigade was now once more 
under Cutler; the Second Brigade was commanded by 
Brigadier-General Rice, of New York, a soldier of the 
very finest quality; a third brigade, consisting of Penn- 
sylvania regiments, was under Colonel Roy Stone, who, 
severely wounded in the desperate fighting at the Mc- 
Pherson farm on the first day at Gettysburg, had now re- 
turned to the army. The number of men "present for 
duty" in the division at the opening of the campaign 
was 6,921. 2 

The men of the old First Corps, hurt at the change 
which had obliterated that organization and left of it 
nothing but a proud memory, welcomed all the more 
eagerly their old division commander. Dawes, of the 
Sixth Wisconsin, just back from a furlough during which 
he had made M. B. G. his wife, wrote to her on April 4: 
"General James S. Wadsworth is now in command of 
our division, and we begin at once to feel the old fellow 
trying in his own level-headed way to ferret out abuses. 
For instance: 'All officers applying for leave of absence 
must state the date and length of their last leave.' He 
is a thorough and able commander." And four days 
later: "This morning the regiment is to be inspected 
by Colonel Osborne, Inspector, at General Wadsworth's 
head-quarters, and every man is busy polishing his 
gun and brasses and blacking his shoes. Our men will 
not allow themselves to be surpassed in neatness of 
appearance." 3 This inspection was a result of Wads- 
worth's announcement that he would publish in general 
orders the names of the three regiments in the division 

1 Letter of Hancock, June 25, 1864, published in New York Evening Post, 
September 29, 1864. 

2 From the return of April 30, 1864, in the adjutant-general's office. 
The total "present for duty" in the Fifth Corps was 25,071. 

3 Service with the 6th Wis., p. 242. 



1864] MARCHING ORDERS 251 

in which the arms and equipment were in the best con- 
dition and also the names of the three regiments at the 
bottom of the list in these respects. The Sixth Wiscon- 
sin came first, owing partly to a recent issue of clothing 
and partly to the fact that the colonel of the regiment 
had discovered at brigade head-quarters at midnight the 
order giving the time of inspection of his regiment— eight 
o'clock the next morning. A preliminary inspection at 
daylight, after which the men went back to bed again, 
had done the rest. 1 

Signs that the campaign was about to begin multi- 
plied. Sutlers and camp-followers of every description 
were ordered to the rear. Baggage was reduced, leaves 
of absence were forbidden, and drills, often in heavy 
marching order, were of almost daily occurrence. In all 
these preparations Wadsworth was mindful of the com- 
fort and well-being of his men. "'Make out a requisi- 
tion for extra shoes,' we heard him say to one of his 
brigadiers; 'about one pair of shoes for every two men. 
I think we can get them of the quartermaster, but I 
will see to it that at any rate they are got. They will 
not be heavy to carry, and we shall find the value of 
them before we get through.' " 2 And then he told the 
correspondent the story already given of his levy of shoes 
during the marches of the Gettysburg campaign. 

Thus April passed, and with the drying up of the 
roads — so important an element in every Virginia cam- 
paign — the time was reached when marching orders for 
the army might be expected at any hour. They came 
on Tuesday, May 3; the Fifth Corps was to start at 
midnight. Since it was important that the enemy should 
get no hint of Grant's movement, the lighting of fires, 
a favorite practice with soldiers breaking camp, was 
strictly forbidden; three days' rations were to be car- 
ried by each man, and fifty rounds of ammunition. Since 

1 Hist, of 150th Pa., p. 205; 6th Wis., p. 245. 

2 Unidentified newspaper clipping. 



252 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

it was already evening when the order reached Wads- 
worth's head-quarters, the completion of his prepara- 
tions gave occupation for every moment of his time. 
And with him, as with many another soldier, one of the 
last things to be done was the writing of the letters 
which might be, and which indeed were, for those at 
home the final word of farewell. Different in tone these 
were from what he had written a year before at the be- 
ginning of the Chancellorsville campaign, showing more 
plainly how his thoughts dwelt upon the welfare of those 
he loved, if perchance he should fall. That to his wife 
was a true soldier's letter, reserved, yet charged with 
feeling that showed the poles of his life to be home and 
duty. 

May 3rd., 9 p. if. 

My Dear Wife: — 

I have just received your most kind letter of 
April 30th (Saturday). We have just received march- 
ing orders to move at 12 tonight and all is bustle and 
confusion. Still I withdraw my mind from the scene 
and the duties of the hour a few moments, my dear wife, 
to tell you that we are all well (Tick 1 is with me) and 
in the best spirits. We feel sure of a victory. — I wish 
I could tell you how much I love you and our dear 
children, how anxious I am that all should go well with 
you, that you will all live in affection and kindness, and 
that none of our dear children will ever do anything to 
tarnish the good name which we who are here hope to 
maintain on the battlefield. — Write a kind letter to dear 
Jimmie if he is not with you, with all the love and affec- 
tion I can express. Kiss Nancy and Lizzie and believe 
me, my dear wife, fondly and truly yours, 

JAS. S. WADSWORTH. 

The region of the Wilderness, 2 into and- through which 
Grant was moving his army and which was destined 

1 Craig was on the staff of Brigadier-General A. T. A. Torbert, command- 
ing the First Division of the cavalry. He distinguished himself throughout 
his service for gallant conduct in battle, particularly at Cold Harbor and 
Trevylian Station, and was thrice brevetted, his final brevet being that of 
colonel. - See map facing p. 260. 



[Fac-simile of General James S. Wadsworth's last letter to his wife j 



>? 



//.,, : /- / ^--r 



6 



/ 



<?L. 



2 






v^ 






^;/^„ .-, 



y 



Wt^- /t,"^ /^ S? 



_ h/ /*£ 



i* -pgzz-^-z^L 









£> 






^/7<l ?i<v / /"cL 



// x r ^ 



b /( / ,^\^A - />*Z- ^/T * ^ 






// '-' 



/fe^ ^"^ 







A l- Si< ls*C- 



<tt. 











1864] THE WILDERNESS 253 

presently to be the scene of a contest the like of which 
had not occurred since Hermann destroyed the Roman 
legions in the forest of Teutoberg, 1 lies immediately south 
of the Rapidan, between Chancellors ville and Mine Run, 
an area some twelve miles across from east to west and 
ten or twelve from north to south. It was covered, then 
as now, by a dense second growth of scrubby trees, the 
primeval forests having been cut down to feed the fur- 
naces connected with the mines that Alexander Spots- 
wood, Governor of Virginia in the early years of the 
eighteenth century, had opened throughout the region. 
"Thickets of stunted pine, sweet-gum, scrub oak, and 
cedar," 2 "a jungle of switch . . . ten or twenty feet 
high," 3 are some of the phrases which have been used 
to characterize this growth; and Milton's "brush with 
frizzled hair implicit" describes the tangle of underbrush 
with which the floor of the forest was encumbered. 

Through the midst of the forest run the Orange Turn- 
pike and the Orange Plank Road, forming the main lines 
of travel between Fredericksburg on the east and Orange 
Court House on the west. Where these are connected 
by the Brock Road, a north and south cross-road, they 
are a mile and a half apart; a little farther west the dis- 
tance between them is nearly twice as great. Another 
cross-road, the Germanna Plank Road, forms the other 
leg of a letter X between the two east and west roads, 
and, extending to the northwest for five miles, crosses 
the Rapidan at Germanna Ford. 

Besides these main roads there is in the forest a maze 
of cart tracks and cow-paths, threading its ravines and 
winding around its swamps, in which seep the waters of 
numerous streams. Here and there are clearings, the 
most considerable of them, that at Wilderness Tavern in 

1 The Wilderness Campaign from Our Present Point of View, by Major 
Eben Swift, U. S. A., Report of Am. Hist. Assn. for 1908, I, 246. 

2 General E. M. Law, in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, rV, 122. 
5 Notes and Recollections of Opening of the Campaign of 1864, McH. 

Howard, Mass. Mil. Hist. Soc. Papers, IV, 97. 



254 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

the heart of the forest, being a mile across in either direc- 
tion. Through this clearing runs the straight and nar- 
row Pike, and where it dips down over rolling slopes to 
cross Wilderness Run the Germanna Ford Road comes 
in from the northwest. Other clearings are the Widow 
Tapp's field and that at Parker's Store on the Orange 
Plank Road, and, lying between them and the Pike in 
the direction of the tavern, the high ground of Chewn- 
ing's Farm. Over this high ground and then down the 
little valley through which flows Wilderness Run lies 
a wood road connecting Parker's Store and Wilderness 
Tavern. 

South of the Rapidan and west of the Wilderness 
beyond Mine Run lay Lee's army. 1 His head-quarters 
were at Orange Court House, some twenty miles from 
the Wilderness Tavern, and Longstreet's corps was still 
farther away to the southwest at Gordonsville and Me- 
chanicsburg. The movement around Lee's right flank 
upon which Grant had determined as the first step in 
the campaign of 1864, though more promising than a 
movement round the left flank, had nevertheless this 
disadvantage, that the army must first traverse the re- 
gion of the Wilderness. Since the long train of four 
thousand wagons was bound in the exigencies of its 
progress to make the Federal advance slow, there was 
danger lest Lee, catching wind of his opponent's course, 
should choose to throw his army across Grant's path 
by the two roads from Orange Court House. The Army 
of the Potomac, therefore, at the same time that it was 
pushing south toward the open country beyond Parker's 
Store, must be so disposed that it could on short notice 
face to the west to meet Lee. The calculation of time, 
based on the Mine Run campaign over the same ground 
in the preceding November, justified belief that, in the 
words of Major-General Humphreys, who prepared the 

J For the places referred to in this paragraph, consult the general map; 
after this paragraph, use the map facing p. 260. 



1864] PLANS OF GRANT AND LEE 255 

details of the movement, the Army of the Potomac 
"might move so far beyond the Rapidan the first day 
that it would be able to pass out of the Wilderness and 
turn, or partly turn, the right flank of Lee before a gen- 
eral engagement took place." 1 In other words, Grant 
might hope on the second day of his march to get to 
Parker's Store and beyond before Lee advanced within 
striking distance on the Pike and the Plank Road. "I 
do not perceive," says General Humphreys, who from 
his position as chief of staff of the Army of the Poto- 
mac speaks with an authority that cannot be gainsaid, 
"that there is anything to induce the belief that Gen- 
eral Grant intended or wished to fight a battle in the 
Wilderness." 2 But Lee, acting on that precept in Na- 
poleon's Maxims of War, 3 "never to do what the enemy 
wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires 
it," here, as at other times during the war, disappointed 
the calculations of his antagonist; through the failure 
of the Federal cavalry to remain on the Pike accord- 
ing to Meade's orders, 4 Ewell's swift approach along that 
road was unknown to Grant, who was thus left too long 
in fancied security. 5 So the battle was brought on in 
the middle of the forest, where Lee's men were much 
more at home than were Grant's, where the disparity 
between his G1,000 and Grant's 115,000 effectives 6 was 
minimized, and where the superiority of the Federal ar- 
tillery counted for nothing. 

A battle fought on these terms is one of "brigades 
and regiments rather than of corps and divisions," 7 if, 
indeed, it is not even better characterized in the words 
of Colonel Theodore Lyman, volunteer aide-de-camp on 
Meade's staff, as a "scientific bushwhack of 200,000 

l The Virginia Campaign of 1864-1865, pp. 11, 12. 
* Va. Campaign, p. 56. 3 Edition of 1861, p. 58. 

4 67 W. R., p. 290. 6 Va. Campaign, p. 22. 

6 Grant's Campaign against Lee, Colonel T. L. Livermore, M. M. H. S. 
Papers, IV, 416. 

' General E. M. Law, in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, IV, 122. 



256 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

men," * Obviously, in such a contest skill in the art 
of war counts for less than individual resourcefulness 
and courage. That courage, too, must be of the kind 
which can put down sudden fear springing from un- 
known causes. One of the officers of the Twentieth 
Massachusetts told Lyman that, though his regiment 
lost one-fourth of its men, he never saw an enemy. 
There is nothing strange, then, in the statement of Colo- 
nel Swan that "in all this wood fighting our troops 
seem to have been greatly alarmed whenever the noise 
of a contest to the right or the left told them that there 
was fighting in the rear of a prolongation of their own 
line. Such noises seem to have caused more disturbance 
than a foe directly in front." 2 

Officers, too, as well as men, felt the spell of the 
Wilderness and were not at their best. "These gen- 
erals," says Colonel Thomas L. Livermore, in speaking 
of the beginning of the battle, "who hesitated to attack 
were brave and skilful soldiers, but some strange leth- 
argy seems to have possessed them." 3 But these mys- 
teries of the woodland, whatever their effect on others, 
proved to have no terrors for Wadsworth. The neces- 
sity of attacking an unseen antagonist with troops which 
for the most part he could not see in nowise daunted 
him, and his valor was as stubborn here as on the open 
fields of Gettysburg. 

In the march which began at midnight of the night 
of May 3-4, Warren's corps was ordered to proceed 
from Culpeper to Germanna Ford, and, having crossed 
the Rapidan, to go on to the Wilderness Tavern, in the 
open ground about which it was to encamp for the night. 
Of Warren's four divisions, Wadsworth's, the next to 
the largest, marched third. 

1 1 am indebted to Professor Theodore Lyman for the privilege of con- 
sulting his father's notes of the battle. 

2 The Battle of the Wilderness, M. M. H. S. Papers, IV, 142. 
a M. M. H. S. Papers, IV, 422. 



1864] THE MARCH 257 

Through the darkness of the early dawn, along the 
roads leading to the chosen fords of the river, "could 
be heard the hum of moving troops and the peculiar 
rattle of cup and canteen which is heard only in war." x 
When the sun rose with the promise of a warm day every 
height of land over which the troops took their way gave 
them glimpses of the vast movement of which they were 
a part. All the roads were marked by columns of in- 
fantry, by wagon trains and artillery; flags dipped and 
the sunlight sparkled on the flanks of the brass Napo- 
leons. Now and again was heard the sound of distant 
cheering. Thrilled by the hope of victory which the 
beginning of the campaign held out to the army, officers 
and men were responsive to the signs of spring every- 
where about them, and Theodore Lyman was not the 
only soldier who noted that "beyond Stevensburg the 
road-side was full of violets, and the little leaves of the 
wood trees were just beginning to unfold, the size of a 
mouse's ear, perhaps." 

By the middle of the morning Wadsworth's division 
had reached Germanna Ford on the Rapidan and had 
begun crossing on the pontoon bridges. On the high 
ground above the south bank were the head-quarters 
colors of Grant, of Meade, and of Warren, and the 
young officers of their staffs exchanged friendly greet- 
ing with their comrades in the marching columns. Leav- 
ing this brilliant group behind them, the sign of the 
unity of that huge organization to which it was their 
pride to belong, Wadsworth's men struck into the Wil- 
derness after the two leading divisions of the Fifth Corps. 

Though the distance from the ford to the tavern 
was less than five miles, the monotony of the forest was 
broken only once or twice by a clearing and a couple 
of old houses, and the distance seemed interminable. 
Tokens of the heat and fatigue of the day appeared in 
the discarded overcoats with which the road-sides were 

1 The Battle of the Wilderness, M. M. H. S. Papers, IV, 119. 



258 WADSWORTII OF GENESEO 

strewn. Arrived at last at the tavern, Wadsworth was 
ordered to encamp his division east of Wilderness Run, 
the divisions ahead of him being one (Griffin's) to the 
west on the Pike and the other (Crawford's) to the south- 
west about the Lacy house, ready to take up the march 
to Parker's Store the next morning. And here, ringed 
about by the Wilderness, one of Wadsworth's regiments 
was brought face to face with reminders of last year's 
battle, of Stonewall Jackson's overwhelming attack upon 
the unguarded Federal flank, and of his mortal wound 
received in the moment of victory. The Second Wiscon- 
sin had been sent on picket duty in the direction of Chan- 
cellorsville, "and its adjutant, G. M. Woodward, of La 
Crosse, Wisconsin, says that where he established the 
line of pickets the ground here and there blazed with 
wild azaleas, and at first presented no evidence that it 
had ever been the scene of battle; dismounting, he soon 
found scattered in every direction the debris of war — 
knapsacks, belts, bayonets, scabbards, etc. Farther on 
he saw what appeared to be a long trench about eight 
feet wide, filled up and mounded, its edges sunken and 
covered with grass, weeds, and wild flowers. This picket 
line ran undoubtedly through Stonewall Jackson's field 
hospital of just a year before, to which he was carried 
when wounded." ' 

Meade's orders for the next day, May 5, required 
Warren, starting at five o'clock, to take his corps by 
the wood road to Parker's Store, and, having reached 
it, to extend his right to Sedgwick, who was to move 
up to take the position that Warren had held on the 
Pike. Hancock, making a long sweep from Chancellors- 
ville, was to take position on Warren's left and to ex- 
tend his right to connect with Warren. This having 
been done, the army was to be "held ready to move for- 
ward." Flankers and pickets were to be thrown well 

1 Schaffs Battle of the Wilderness, p. 97. To this book, as well as to 
personal help given me by its author, I am greatly indebted. 



1864] LEE AT HAND 259 

out and all the troops "held ready to meet the enemy 
at any moment." l 

The belief on which these orders were based, that 
Lee's army was far enough away to the west for this 
"preliminary position" to be taken on the morning of 
May 5, was destined not to survive many hours of day- 
light. On the night of May 4 the head of Ewell's corps 
had encamped on the Pike only five miles from Wilder- 
ness Tavern, while the head of Hill's corps on the 
Plank Road was within three or four miles of Parker's 
Store. 2 The two columns which Lee was sending to 
strike athwart the Federal line of march were thus close 
at hand. 

The proximity of Ewell on the Pike was discovered 
early on the morning of May 5 by the outposts of Grif- 
fin's division. Warren, though sceptical as to the grav- 
ity of the situation, told Griffin to get ready to attack 
at once. 3 Meade, hurrying up, ordered Warren to sus- 
pend his march and to attack straightway with his whole 
force, saying, "If there is to be any fighting this side 
of Mine Run, let us do it right off." 4 Finally, Grant, 
when communicated with, ordered an immediate attack; 5 
taken by surprise though he was, he proposed to lose 
not an hour in striking at Lee, whether he had to en- 
counter a whole corps or only a rear-guard. 

At five o'clock Crawford's division of Warren's corps 
had started from about the Lacy house, followed by 
Wads worth's; they were making good progress toward 
Parker's Store when they suddenly heard the sound of 
skirmishing in the direction of Mine Run. Soon an 
aide hurried up to Wadsworth with orders from Warren 
despatched at 7.30: "The movement towards Parker's 
Store is suspended for the moment. You will halt, face 
towards Mine Run, and make your connection with Gen- 

1 Meade's orders, May 4, 6 p. m. — (68 W. R., p. 371.) 

5 Va. Camp., p. 23. 3 68 W. R., p. 416. 

4 Schaff, p. 128. 6 68 W. R., p. 403. 



200 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

eral Griffin on your right." x Presently Warren himself, 
accompanied by Lieutenant Schaff, rode up. "Find out 
what is in there," he said, pointing to the woods to- 
ward the west. 2 

Taking the two batteries (Breck's First New York 
and Stewart's Fourth United States) that were with the 
division, and the leading brigade, Rice's, and sending 
orders to Stone and Cutler, Wadsworth started in the 
direction indicated by Warren. The batteries followed up 
a road which had evidently been used for bringing out 
charcoal and which was now grown up with small brush 
and full of stumps and rotting logs. A journey through 
the woods of perhaps a quarter of a mile brought them 
out on a narrow clearing less than half a mile long, where 
were situated the buildings of Miss Hagerson's farm. 
Wadsworth halted the batteries at the eastern edge of 
the clearing and directed Stewart, who will be remem- 
bered for the execution he did on Scales's brigade at 
Gettysburg, to command them both. 3 No task could 
please the daring Scotchman better than to manage guns 
in such a remote and hazardous position. The brigade 
Wadsworth formed in the clearing. At 8.30, less than 
an hour after receiving Warren's order, he explained to 
Griffin, commanding the division on his right, the dis- 
position of his own 6,500 effectives as follows: "I find an 
opening and tolerable position for artillery about one 
and one-half miles from Lacy's house. I am at that 
point with two batteries and one brigade [Rice]. Have 
a brigade [Stone] stretched thinly through a piece of 
very thick woods and one brigade [Cutler] near you." 4 
The left of his line was supported by the Maryland bri- 
gade of Robinson's division. 

In this position, although by his connection with 

1 68 W. R., p. 420. A similar order sent to Crawford at the same time 
bade him connect with Wadsworth on his right. 

2 Schaff, p. 129. 3 The Cannoneer, pp. 159, 160. 
1 68 W. R., p. 420. 




POSITION OF TROOPS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BATTLE OF THK 
WILDERNESS. 



1864] ATTACK DELAYED 261 

Griffin Wadsworth was well protected on the right, he 
was not so fortunate in respect to his other flank. Craw- 
ford, by reason of exigencies presently to be noted, told 
off only a part of a brigade (McCandless's) to join hands 
with Wadsworth, and then only after so much delay that 
it was of no use. Moreover, Rice's brigade, formed along 
the length of the Hagerson farm and facing northwest, 
had its unprotected left flank even advanced toward the 
enemy. 

No advantage, however, was to be gained from Wads- 
worth's prompt preparations, though a brisk attack was 
precisely the thing desired by Grant and Meade. In his 
message sent at 8.24 in response to the notification of 
Ewell's advance, Grant had said: "If any opportunity 
presents itself for pitching into a part of Lee's army, 
do so without giving time for disposition." 1 The faith- 
ful execution of this, the new commander's first fighting 
order to the Army of the Potomac, was the primary 
essential to the success of the Union arms, yet the battle 
did not begin till well beyond the hour of noon. 2 

1 68 W. R., p. 403. 

■ The blame for the delay rests squarely upon Warren, commanding the 
Fifth Corps, though the difficulties encountered by his division commanders, 
Crawford and Griffin, furnished excuses that at the moment seemed all- 
sufficient. Crawford's division, when the order to halt came, had reached the 
high ground of Chewning's Farm, only a little over a mile from Parker's 
Store on the Plank Road. Toward Parker's Store the enemy, Hill's corps, 
was advancing steadily, though delayed somewhat by a small force of 
Union cavalry. Failure to occupy these open fields meant the abandoning 
to the Confederates of the best fighting-ground in the whole region. It 
meant, too, that Hill could move forward unopposed to the junction of the 
Brock Road with the Plank Road, in which position he could cut off Han- 
cock's corps from the rest of the army. More than one protest, therefore, 
Crawford sent back to Warren, but to no purpose. As late as 11.50 Warren 
sent him a sharp command : " You must connect with General Wadsworth, 
and cover and protect his left as he advances." — (68 W. R., p. 419.) Be- 
sides the delay from this cause, Warren was constantly receiving reports 
from Griffin of the formidable force that was opposed to him, the diffi- 
culty of forming in the woods, and the need of more time to allow Wright 
of the Sixth Corps to come into position on his right. "The Union gen- 
erals," says Colonel Thomas L. Livermore in commenting on these remon- 
strances, "had too often delayed their attacks for everybody to come into 
line. The chance of inflicting damaging blows before the enemy had con- 



262 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Meanwhile, Wadsworth's troops, having thrown up 
slight intrenchments, were lying at their ease in the 
woods, full of the cheer of the warm spring morning. 
The officers of the Sixth Wisconsin, in the second line 
of the Iron Brigade, lounged under a great oak-tree, 
chaffing one another as if it were the noon hour of a 
day's hunting expedition. 1 

At a little before one o'clock the attack began. The 
orders were to advance due west by the compass, a com- 
mand impossible of execution even if there had been a 
compass for every man of them. Schaff's account gives 
a vivid picture of the kind of thing that happened. 

"The troops tried at first to advance in fine of battle 
from the temporary works which had been thrown up 
while the reconnoissances and preparations were going 
on; but owing to the character of the woods they soon 
found that was out of the question, and had to break 

centrated and prepared for the attack had too often been thrown away in 
this manner, and this was not the time to repeat these tactics." — (M. M. 
H. S. Papers, IV, 420.) Thus the unfortunate corps commander was ground 
between the upper and the nether millstones. At 10.30 he sent an order to 
Wadsworth to attack without waiting for Griffin, bidding him at the same 
time to look out himself for his own left flank — that is, not to rely on Crawford 
for protection on that side; but the order was suspended, probably by rea- 
son of fresh representations from Griffin. "One cannot wonder," remarks 
Colonel Livermore, "that Grant, waiting for over four hours at the Wilder- 
ness Tavern to hear Warren's musketry announce that his orders had been 
obeyed, should question the spirit of those who were responsible for the 
delay, every moment of which was impairing the chance for victory which 
he saw within his grasp." — (Ibid., p. 422.) One cannot help thinking, too, 
that here was the beginning of the tragedy of Five Forks which darkened 
the remainder of Warren's days. 

This delay of Warren's offered a golden opportunity which Ewell was 
not slow to seize. He had been cautioned by Lee not to bring on a general 
engagement, since Longstreet's corps was not yet near enough at hand, 
but he had sufficient time to get the brigades of his leading divisions 
into line. Those nearest the Pike on either side were formed near the 
western edge of the Sanders field; the others were sent into the woods to 
right and left as they came up. So it was that, when at last, Warren's men 
moved to the attack, the opposing troops were facing each other in lines 
that were, roughly speaking, at right angles with the Pike. Only, as has 
been said, the left flank of Wadsworth's left brigade was extended toward 
the enemy. 

1 6th. Wis., p. 259. 



1864] WADSWORTH'S ATTACK 2G3 

by battalions and wings into columns of fours. So by 
the time they neared the enemy all semblance of line 
of battle was gone and there were gaps everywhere 
between regiments and brigades. Regiments that had 
started in the second line facing west found themselves 
facing north, deploying ahead of the first line. As an 
example of the confusion, the Sixth Wisconsin had been 
formed behind the Seventh Indiana, with orders to fol- 
low it at a distance of one hundred yards. By running 
ahead of his regiment the colonel of the Sixth managed 
to keep the Seventh in sight till they were close to the 
front; but when the firing began the Seventh set out at 
double-quick for the enemy and disappeared in a mo- 
ment, and the next thing was an outburst of musketry 
and the enemy were coming in front and marching by 
both flanks," 1 

Under these difficult circumstances, it was the Iron 
Brigade with its western woodsmen that made the best 
progress. At the moment of contact with the enemy 
they were in advance of the rest of the division on their 
left and of the nearest brigade (Bartlett's) of Griffin's di- 
vision on their right. They pushed forward with cheers, 
and the force opposed to them (Jones's brigade of John- 
son's division) gave way. So great was their impetus 
that with the help of Bartlett's brigade they broke the 
brigades (Battle's and Doles's of Rodes's division) in the 
Confederate second line. Three flags and two hundred 
and eighty-nine prisoners Cutler reported as their prize. 2 
But this advance was an isolated one. Griffin's men on 
the other side of the Pike found that the line opposite 
them overlapped theirs considerably on the right, and 

1 Schaff's Battle of the Wilderness, p. 152. Owing to the absence of 
distinctive landmarks and the fact that the woods confounded every one's 
sense of direction, the detailed narratives of individuals and of regiments 
are exceptionally at variance with each other. For these reasons more than 
the usual allowance for possible error must be made in connection with state- 
ments of the position of troops. 

2 67 W. R., p. 610. 



264 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

soon the flank fire from its extreme regiments drove 
them back in confusion. Bartlett and Cutler were pres- 
ently assailed by troops from Early's division, which, 
forming hurriedly and coming on with a wild yell, broke 
them up and forced them back. Cutler's people did not 
stop till they reached the open ground of the Lacy plan- 
tation; but for all that they were not too demoralized 
to bring their prisoners with them. 

In Wadsworth's centre, meanwhile, some of Stone's 
regiments had encountered a swamp. Impeded and be- 
wildered in the attempt to accomplish its passage, they 
were completely unnerved by the discharges of mus- 
ketry about them. Indeed, it is altogether probable that 
they and Rice's men fired into each other. At all events, 
the men nearest to Rice, occupied in extricating them- 
selves each from his own mud-hole or briery tangle, made 
no resistance worth mentioning. As for Rice's brigade, 
its misfortunes had begun earlier in the morning, when 
four whole companies and parts of two others sent out 
as skirmishers had been captured. Now, as it advanced 
through a piece of woods particularly dense, its left 
swung round toward the Pike. When presently it was 
checked by the fire of an unseen foe, the discovery that 
the enemy's line overlapped that flank for a consider- 
able distance threw it into complete confusion. As the 
regiments, disorganized by the flank attack, poured back 
into the Hagerson clearing, their assailants, Daniel's bri- 
gade of Rodes's division, coming close behind them, 
Stewart recognized the opportunity for which he had 
been waiting. Realizing that he might be called upon 
to get out of a tight place in a hurry, he had already 
sent back toward the Lacy plantation the other bat- 
tery and the caissons of both, and now with his guns 
"at fixed prolonge," ready to move without a second's 
delay, he was in a position to prevent the Confederates 
from crossing the field. When the canister which he 
gave them in good measure had driven them back to 



1864] ATTACK REPULSED 265 

the shelter of the woods, he withdrew his battery as 
rapidly as the holes and stumps in the wood road per- 
mitted. 1 

This encounter between Warren and Ewell, which, 
beginning at 12.50, lasted for about an hour and a half, 2 
resulted in the repulse of all the Federal troops engaged. 
Not only was Grant's plan of a sudden, sharp blow at 
Lee while he was unprepared frustrated, but the Federal 
troops had shown themselves less able than the Con- 
federates to cope with the difficulties of forest fighting 
and more subject to its terrors. The prestige of victory 
in the first meeting of the two great antagonists was with 
Lee. In truth, if Warren's men had been pursued, their 
punishment would unquestionably have been severer. 
For this immunity Grant had to thank the restraining 
orders of Lee, who was unwilling to risk more until 
Longstreet had joined him. 

The part taken by Wadsworth himself in the en- 
gagement is hard to define. His brigades, stretched out 
through the woods, were as completely beyond his con- 
trol as they were beyond his sight, and the stunted 
pines with their spreading branches practically prohib- 
ited communication by mounted aides. Wadsworth's 
presence, therefore, was of avail only with the troops 
of Rice's brigade in the Hagerson clearing. Shut off 
from knowledge of Cutler's success at first, he was cog- 
nizant only of the feeble resistance of Stone's regiments 
to the advance of the Confederates on the right flank 
of Rice's brigade and then of the disaster on the other 
flank. With affairs going in this fashion there was noth- 



1 The Cannoneer, p. 159; History of the N. C. Regiments, HI, 44. Colonel 
YVainwright, commanding the artillery brigade of the Fifth Corps, in his report 
says merely that Stewart's and Breck's batteries "did not get into position 
at this place," i. e., Hagerson's. — (67 W. R., p. 640.) Stewart's fortune 
with his guns is in strong contrast to the loss of the section of Winslow's 
battery which was advanced along the Pike as far as the Sanders field. 

2 According to Colonel Lyman, whose indications of time are unusually 
precise.— (M. M. H. S. Papers, IV, 167.) 



266 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

ing for Wadsworth to do but to order a retreat before 
he was entirely cut off. This was disconcerting enough, 
but he became still more wrought up when, on getting 
back to the fields about the Lacy house, he found men of 
all his brigades emerging in more or less confusion from 
the woods to the west. Once in the open, to be sure, 
they halted; they had got their bearings and, more than 
that, could realize that they were not being pursued. 
Though the reforming of the regiments was now an easy 
matter, his vexation at their unaccountable behavior 
increased, if anything, as he dashed hither and thither. 
That the men who had endured so steadily all the long 
day at Gettysburg should now give way on such short 
provocation was a possibility for which he was totally 
unprepared. At the moment his philosophy could not 
compass it, and the chagrin of the failure overcame him 
completely. 

Wadsworth was not the only officer whose temper, 
severely strained during the long anxious morning, first 
by the baffling contest with nature and then by the 
contest with men whom nature seemed to be aiding, 
now gave way. At the Lacy house, where Warren was, 
and at Grant's and Meade's head-quarters on the other 
side of the Pike, many hard words were dealt. Griffin 
came storming in, so angry that he had been ordered 
to attack before the Sixth Corps had got into position 
on his right that his language seemed to Rawlins, Grant's 
chief of staff, sufficient cause for his arrest. The loss of 
two guns, which had been advanced along the Pike, was 
the occasion of much recriminating language. Craw- 
ford reported nearly a whole regiment captured. 1 War- 
ren was conscious that the burden of his defeat would 

1 This regiment, the 7th (Reserve) Pennsylvania, numbering 272, was 
captured by a stray company or two of the 61st Georgia of Gordon's brigade. 
Both commands were wandering about lost when they suddenly encoun- 
tered each other, and the quick wit of the Confederate commander enabled 
him to capture a force greatly outnumbering his own. — (A Soldier's Story of 
His Regiment (61 Ga.), p. 144, and History of the Penn. Volunteers, I, 729.) 



1864] THE CROSS-ROADS 267 

not be eased for him by his superiors. The blame that 
was in the heart of every one flowed from the tongue 
unchecked. 

Though the work along Warren's line was now done 
for the day, another battle on the Plank Road to the 
south was about to begin; and as Wadsworth's fighting 
spirit was soon to take him thither it is necessary to 
explain the situation there. Hill's column, led here as 
at Gettysburg by Heth's division, though delayed some- 
what by the Federal cavalry on the Plank Road, had 
during the forenoon been advancing steadily 1 toward its 
all-important goal, the point where that road was crossed 
by the Brock Road. The division behind Heth, Wilcox's, 
was to protect Hill's left flank by connecting with Ewell's 
right at the Hagerson farm. 

Meade, meanwhile, realizing that if Hill seized the 
Brock Road, Hancock's corps to the south at Todd's 
Tavern would be cut off, had hurried to the crossing 
from the Wilderness clearing Getty's division (three 
brigades) of Sedgwick's corps, and had ordered Hancock 
back to the same spot. Getty reached the place in the 
nick of time, at about noon, and Hancock's men began 
to arrive at two o'clock. 2 It was in defence of the line 
of the Brock Road that the severe fighting of the re- 
maining thirty hours of the battle of the Wilderness 
took place. Severe, indeed, it was beyond almost any- 
thing that either army had hitherto known. "There are 
but one or two square miles upon this continent," re- 
marks Colonel Swan, 3 "that have been more saturated 
with blood than was the square mile which lay in front 
of the Brock Road and had the Orange Plank Road as 
a central avenue, in the two days of the battle of the 

1 At 8 A. M. the head of Hill's column was skirmishing at Parker's Store 
with Federal cavalry. — (Crawford's report, 68 W. R., p. 418.) Crawford was 
mistaken in believing that the opposing force was cavalry. At 12.15 the 
infantry skirmishers had reached within half a mile of the Brock Road. — 
(Getty's report, 68 W. R., p. 421.) 

2 67 W. R, p. 350. 3 M. M. H. S. Papers, IV, 144. 



268 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Wilderness. . . . Nearly every square yard had its fill 
of blood, and on nearly every square yard was Northern 
and Southern blood intermingled." 

This cross-roads is perhaps the most desolate spot in 
all the desolation of the forest. The brick-red roads 
are narrow and run at right angles to each other. The 
jungle comes up close on either side and the traveller 
can see into it for a distance of barely twenty feet. In 
the space north of the Plank Road and west of the Brock 
Road, the presence of swamps and runs adds to the dif- 
ficulty of the ground. There is no clearing for a mile in 
any direction. 

Wadsworth, as has been said, soon reformed his 
men and stationed them on the high ground in front 
of the Lacy house, facing toward the Plank Road. Here 
Grant and Meade found him when during the afternoon 
they came over to inspect Warren's position. Grant 
was anxious to know whether it would not be possible 
to send a force straight through the woods to strike 
Hill in the left flank and rear at the same time that 
Getty and Hancock assailed him in front, and Wads- 
worth's reply was the instant request that the task be 
given to him. The bad conduct of part of his com- 
mand was still rankling within him and he felt as if his 
own honor were stained; moreover, his men were at hand 
and well rested and no less eager than he to retrieve be- 
fore nightfall the disasters of the morning. As the com- 
manding general listened to this energetic plea and got 
a glimpse of the white-haired soldier's instinct for tak- 
ing a hand wherever there was a chance to do any fight- 
ing, he had an opportunity to revise his opinion con- 
cerning the slowness of Warren's generals. Robinson, 
too, commanding the Second Division of the Fifth Corps, 
asked to have a part in the movement, and when his 
second brigade, Baxter's, was added by Grant to Wads- 
worth's command, accompanied it. 

And yet from this undertaking, as from the morn- 



1864] HANCOCK AND HILL 2G9 

ing's attack, the advantage of prompt movement was 
to be withheld. Where the blame lies cannot now be 
ascertained, but for an hour after the troops were ready 
they waited for marching orders. At quarter-past four 
the sound of Getty's and Hancock's attack, late in begin- 
ning from causes similar to those that had delayed the 
morning attack on the Pike, was borne from the direc- 
tion of the cross-roads, and as the sun sank lower the 
chances of getting through a mile and a half of dense 
woods in time to strike Hill's flank grew less and less. 
At five o'clock report was made to Warren of a move- 
ment of Confederate troops from Chewning's toward 
Heth, and the order to Wadsworth to go in was either 
consequent upon this or else coincident with it. 1 

The task which Wadsworth had undertaken was one 
to test to the uttermost the nerve of a leader. The diffi- 
culties of advancing in line through forest swamps and 
ravines, the spell of foreboding that woods at dusk al- 
ways weave about every heart, told upon the firmness 
of the men, and all the while, in the expressive phrase 
of one regimental historian, "the whole Wilderness roared 
like fire in a canebrake." 2 It is not strange that when 
the enemy's skirmish line — Wilcox's men of Hill's corps, 
placed across their path barely ten minutes before — fired 
upon them, one brigade, terror-stricken, became utterly 
demoralized. The men "broke in a disgraceful manner," 
so says one report in the official records, "on seeing the 
fire of Baxter's skirmishers in front of them. They were 
stopped, however, by the exertions of their own officers 
and Cutler's bayonets behind them." 3 

The firing thus begun spread from one regiment to 
another, and soon in Wadsworth's command there was a 
veritable riot of musketry. Volley after volley was dis- 
charged, sometimes at the retreating skirmish line, some- 

1 Va. Campaign, p. 29. This is the time noted by E. B. Washburne, who 
was at Grant's head-quarters. 

1 Hist. N. C. Regiments, II, 665. 3 67 W. R., p. 615 



270 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

times at stray commands wandering about hopelessly lost, 
sometimes at no enemy at all. So tremendous and so 
prolonged was the roar that Grant at head-quarters im- 
agined Wadsw T orth to be in a contest with a forestful 
of Confederates, handsomely cleaning them out and mak- 
ing connection with Hancock on the Plank Road. At 
the bivouac fire that evening he and Rawlins were full 
of rejoicing at Wadsworth's success and left unsaid no 
word of praise for his promptness, courage, and patriot- 
ism. E. B. Washburne, member of Congress from Illi- 
nois, who, as Grant's friend, was accompanying the army, 
could add much concerning what he had known of Wads- 
worth in Washington. 1 

The reality of this "success," however, was ironically 
different and w T as for Wadsworth the final stroke in the 
day's disasters. The commander of the brigade already 
mentioned, with hilariousness well stimulated, continued 
to make the forest ring with his discharges, and when 
Wadsworth sent an aide to bid him cease firing and 
keep quiet, ordered cheers for his native State. A sec- 
ond order to report at once to Wadsworth he refused to 
obey. 2 The next morning he had disappeared altogether; 
his service to the Union cause was at an end. 

As long as there was a glimmer of light Wadsworth's 
line advanced, pushing Wilcox's skirmishers back toward 
the Plank Road. When the division finally came to a 
halt the line was about half or three-quarters of a mile 
from the road and nearly parallel to it. It had, how- 
ever, moved more to the left than was at first intended, 
the magnet of Hill's and Hancock's contest proving an 
irresistible attraction. The right of the line was thus 
not far from the northeast corner of the Widow Tapp's 
clearing, on the western edge of which were Lee's and 
Hill's head-quarters; the left was in the thick woods 

1 E. B. Washburne to C. F. Wadsworth, June 2, 1865. 
5 Information furnished by Earl M. Rogers, who was on Wadsworth's 
staff. 



1864] NIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS 271 

toward Hancock's line, but not connecting with it. 
Though as yet Wadsworth had brought no aid to Han- 
cock, and though, by reason of his boisterous advance, 
a surprise was now out of the question, yet he was in 
position to take part at once in the hard fighting which 
was sure to begin early the next day. Late at night, 
when the regiments had all reported, he sent an aide, 
Captain Monteith, back to Warren to get the next day's 
orders and also to bring up a supply of ammunition, 
much needed after the recent expenditure. 

The many records that have been made of the hours 
passed in this nightmare of a place show how completely 
the mystery of the forest had penetrated the living beings 
who had invaded its depths, working upon them in dark- 
ness even more compellingly than in daylight. That por- 
tion of Wadsworth's command near the Tapp field was 
so close to the enemy that men venturing out from either 
side in search of water found themselves caught within 
the lines of their opponents. Now and then a soldier, 
as merciful as he was daring, crept out to give a drink 
from his canteen to a wounded enemy whose cries min- 
gled with the calls of the whippoorwills. Near where 
the men of the Sixth Wisconsin lay on their arms a dying 
Confederate soldier moaned repeatedly: "My God! why 
hast thou forsaken me?" ' 

The fortunes of the battle about to be renewed were 
dependent for both sides on the arrival of reinforcements. 
Burnside's corps of approximately 17,000 men, which 
was due to be on hand early in the morning, was to 
attack Hill on the left flank and rear in the Chewning 
fields, the high open ground from which Crawford had 
been withdrawn the morning before. This attack, if 
successful, would cut off Ewell from Hill. But Burnside 
had, as Lyman said of him, a "genius of slowness"; 
while on the Confederate side, where the need was 
far more exigent, the hope of help lay in Longstreet, 

1 6th Wisconsin, p. 261. 



272 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

Lee's strength and reliance. In the conflict of the after- 
noon of May 5 — "a butchery pure and simple . . . unre- 
lieved by any of the arts of war in which the exercise of 
military skill and tact robs the hour of some of its hor- 
rors" ' — Hill's two divisions, amounting to 15,000 men, 
had been terribly weakened, and when night brought the 
contest to an end he allowed his battered brigades to 
stay where darkness found them, their intrenchments 
not continuous and their lines unrectified. Thus inse- 
cure and anxious, he and Lee at their head-quarters in 
the Tapp field prayed that dawn might not come before 
they should be reinforced. Longstreet, in truth, with his 
10,000 men, was not failing them. Having rested his 
troops after a march of twenty-three miles, he had 
started half an hour after midnight 2 to complete the 
remaining ten or eleven miles to the battle-field; Ander- 
son's division of Hill's corps, 7,000 by count, had about 
the same distance left to accomplish on the Plank 
Road. 

At three o'clock Captain Monteith returned to Wads- 
worth, bringing the supply of ammunition and the orders 
from Warren, which were to attack at five o'clock simul- 
taneously with Hancock: "Set your line of battle on a 
line northeast and southwest, and march directly south- 
east on the flank of the enemy in front of General Han- 
cock." 3 Before the ammunition could be distributed, 
dawn had already come. 4 It was Friday, May 6, the 
most critical day in the history of the Republic, and for 
Wadsworth the last day of conscious life. 

At the earliest gleam of light the men were roused, 
and then, having snatched a cold bite and formed in 
silence, they waited the sound of the signal gun from 
Hancock's head-quarters at the cross-roads. When its 

1 History of the N. C. Regiments, III, 75. 

2 67 W. R., p. 1054. 

3 68 \V. R., p. 458. The hour for the attack as given in the despatch was 
4.30. It was later changed by Grant's order to five o'clock. 

4 War papers, Wisconsin Commandery of the Loyal Legion, I, 413. 



1864] WADSWORTH'S ATTACK 273 

boom broke the stillness they pushed resolutely through 
the thickets and swamps. As they drew near the Plank 
Road the left naturally swung round so as to advance 
in line with Getty's and Birney's divisions which were 
coming from the Brock Road. The two bodies thus 
meeting became somewhat crowded together, but lost 
none of their energy. 1 They quickly brushed the Con- 
federates out of their irregular breastworks and drove 
them down the road and through the forest toward 
and into the Tapp field, capturing many prisoners. 2 
Hancock, at the cross-roads, as he received one mes- 
sage after another of success, was radiant. "Tell Gen- 
eral Meade," he cried to Lyman, "we are driving them 
most beautifully. Birney has gone in and is cleaning 
them out beautifully." Well might he seize this chance 

1 Colonel Lyman's comment on this advance affords another illustration 
— if another be needed — of the difficulties attending the study of the battle 
of the Wilderness. "Concerning this fight on the Plank Road, there has 
been the greatest discussion between Webb's brigade, Getty's division, and 
the divisions of Birney and of Wadsworth, especially the two latter. Wads- 
worth's people, and Cope, of General Warren's staff, state that they drove 
back the rebels and got a footing on the Plank Road (attacking the rebel 
left in that part of the field) and that one brigade swept the whole front 
of the Second Corps and came out on the other side, while the Second Corps 
were lying behind breastworks doing nothing! Birney's people, per contra, 
say that Wadsworth's attack amounted to nothing and he was driven back, 
though personally he came on the Plank Road and interfered with the order 
of battle, while they did all the successful fighting! The two accounts are 
entirely unreconcilable, but are not astonishing in a desperate fight in a thick 
cover, where no one can see a hundred feet and every one is liable to get 
turned round." 

2 Rice's brigade on Wadsworth's right fared less fortunately. As it at- 
tempted to push into the Tapp field it was stopped by a battery posted in 
the northeast corner of the clearing. Rice, a brave and resourceful soldier, 
in the hope of surprising the battery, sent two regiments through the woods 
to the right, with orders to take it with the bayonet. The movement was 
discovered, however, in time for it to limber up and retreat to the other 
side of the clearing, where with a fierce fire of shrapnel it drove off the de- 
tachment and held Rice in check.— (67 W. R., p. 623.) 

Four days later, at Spotsylvania, Rice was mortally wounded. "After 
having his leg amputated he was asked by the attending physician which 
way he desired to be turned that he mifiht rest more easy. He replied: 
'Turn me with my face to the enemy.' These were his last words, and in- 
dicated the true character of the man, the soldier, and the patriot." — (67 
W. R., 625, report of Colonel J. W. Hofmann.) 



274 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

to rejoice; it proved the one instant of triumph in all 
that fatal day. 

For the Confederates the situation was desperate. 
If they could not maintain themselves in the clearing, 
their chance of dividing Grant's army was gone once 
for all. In the life of Lee it was one of those supreme 
moments when the soldier's being, with a degree of power 
rarely attained, must seek to infuse its will into thou- 
sands of men whose wills have gone nerveless at the bid- 
ding of mob terror and despair. That force of his must 
flow everywhere, imparting the cheer and certainty of 
present help — for Longstreet's two divisions, commanded 
by Field and Kershaw, were advancing in parallel columns 
along the Plank Road at as near a double-quick as the 
weary men could attain. And so the gray-haired gen- 
eral, mounted on Traveller, a figure hardly less historic 
than Lee himself, radiating ardor of battle in the moment 
of defeat, seems, in the picture that one forms of that 
forlorn field with its small huddle of shanties and its 
withered fruit trees, to be indeed omnipresent. But 
in this crisis the summons of Lee, at other times all- 
compelling in its inspiration, proved of little avail. On 
the southern edge of the field Birney's left had advanced 
so far that its fire came in the rear of the Confederate 
batteries, 1 the guns of which now brought no sense of 
strength to the dispirited masses of men in gray who, as 
one brigade after another had been rolled up, refused to 
rally and did not stop even when they reached the shelter 
of the woods. "My God! General McGowan," exclaimed 
Lee, "is this splendid brigade of yours running like a 
flock of geese?" 2 

By six o'clock the head of Longstreet's column had 
reached the field. His first brigades got into position 
just in time to arrest the career of Birney's troops, and 
when Gregg's Texas brigade, the fourth to arrive, came 
up and formed behind the guns, its duty was to assail 

1 Va. Campaign, p. 38. 2 Quoted by Schaff, p. 249. 



1864] GREGG'S TEXANS 275 

the woods north of the Plank Road, where Wadsworth's 
men had been momentarily checked by the artillery. 
Lee, the need of success his one thought, rode along-side 
the Texans as they were about to start, and declared that 
he himself would lead them. To their cries of "Go back, 
General Lee, go back," and "We won't go on unless you 
go back," r he paid no heed, till a man stepped from 
the ranks and, seizing Traveller's bridle, turned the 
horse about. "The fine eye of Lee," says one of the 
many Confederate accounts of this stirring incident, 
"must often have glistened with something better than 
a conqueror's pride whenever he recalled the cry with 
which that veteran rank and file sent him to the rear 
and themselves to the front." 2 

It was a brigade thus sped to the charge that Wads- 
worth and his men, themselves in far from good order, 
were destined to meet. The wide wheel that they had 
made to advance westward, the intermingling with the 
troops of Hancock's corps, and finally the struggle 
through the morass which lay across their path had 
cut up their formation into small separate masses; but 
their ardor was undiminished. For all their disorder 
they had caught a vision of victory such as the Army 
of the Potomac had not known for many a long month. 
The shock when their first line met the Texans was ap- 
palling. "The Federals," writes the Confederate gen- 
eral, E. M. Law, "were advancing through the pines 
with apparently resistless force, when Gregg's eight hun- 
dred Texans, regardless of numbers, flanks, or supports, 
dashed directly upon them. There was a terrific crash, 
mingled with wild yells, which settled down into a steady 
roar of musketry. In less than ten minutes one-half of 

1 Address of Colonel C. S. Venable before the Virginia Division of the 
Army of Northern Virginia, October 30, 1873, p. 4. 

- Address of Leigh Robinson before the Virginia Division of the Army 
of Northern Virginia, November 1, 1877, p. 75. Near this spot on the Plank 
Road now stands a low stone bearing the date and the words: " 'Lee to the 
rear,' cried the Texans." 



276 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

that devoted eight hundred were lying upon the field, 
dead or wounded; but they had delivered a staggering 
blow and broken the force of the Federal advance." 1 

Wadsworth, who was on the Plank Road, had his 
horse shot under him; the division, sheltered in the 
woods, stood firm. The charge of another brigade, 
Benning's Georgians, no less furious than that of the 
Texans, it repulsed also, inflicting hardly less damage; 
but the third assault, made by Law's brigade, it could 
not withstand. The fierceness of this contest is viv- 
idly portrayed in the narrative of Sergeant Frey, of the 
One Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania of Stone's bri- 
gade. Though it has the conventional characteristics of 
"battle pieces" in regimental histories, the note of ad- 
miration for Wadsworth's courage and kindliness gives 
it individuality and point. 

"Now is our turn. As the men composing our first 
and second lines take refuge in our rear, we move to the 
front, and General Wadsworth riding up to our regiment 
says: 'Give it to them, Bucktails!' We pour in one 
close, deadly volley, and they stagger under the terrible 
fire. The general shouts: 'Boys, you are driving them; 
charge!' Our brigade, now the front, charges fiercely, 
driving them back some distance; but a fresh line comes 
to their support, fires a volley in our very faces, and 
sends us back over the ground we had just gained, charg- 
ing us in return. A new line comes to our aid, pours its 
fire upon the opposing ranks, compelling them to give 
way; and again we charge over the same ground, only 
to be driven back in turn on our reserves, as reinforce- 
ments come to the help of the enemy. The battle now 
becomes close and bloody. Charges and counter-charges 
are made in quick succession. Five times we traverse 
the same ground, led by General Wadsworth who sits 
on his horse with hat in hand, bringing it down on the 
pommel of his saddle with every bound as he rides at 

1 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, IV, 125. 



1864] WADSWORTH PUSHED BACK 277 

the head of the column. Then, as the bullets strike 
among his men like hail and they begin to recoil, he 
rides slowly back in their midst, speaking kindly to 
them, with ever a smile on his pleasant countenance 
which shows no concern for the storm of lead and iron 
raging around him." ' 

"Wadsworth has been slowly pushed back," reported 
Captain Cope of Warren's staff at 7.40, "but is con- 
testing every inch of ground." 2 At length, however, 
the Confederate advance against Birney south of the 
Plank Road prospered; the force opposed to Wadsworth 
succeeded in pushing his regiments farther and farther 
into the deep woods and across the swampy ground over 
which they had so recently won their way. Retreating 
under these circumstances, the division lost all coherence 
and for a time was scattered in fragments through the 
forest. Fortunately, however, the Confederates could 
not immediately follow up their advantage, and Wads- 
worth, with the aid of General Rice and of Rogers and 
Monteith of his own staff, succeeded in bringing his force 
into some sort of order. 

The position of the Union troops after Longstreet's 
attack, though difficult to ascertain with exactness, is 
perhaps best set forth by Atkinson. "Getty had been 
crowded, during the first advance, to the south side of 
the road, and all troops that had been engaged were being 
rallied and reformed in close order, so that a gap had 
opened immediately on the right of the Plank Road be- 
tween the troops that had been fighting under Birney 
against Kershaw and those that had engaged Field's divi- 
sion near Tapp's along with the Fifth Corps under Wads- 
worth." 3 Into this gap at about seven o'clock advanced 
the brigade of Brigadier-General Alexander S. Webb, the 
body that at Gettysburg had borne the brunt of Pickett's 
charge. Ordered by Birney to deploy on the Plank Road 

1 150 Penn. Volunteers, pp. 215, 216. » 08 W. R., p. 458. 

'Grant's Campaigns of 1804 and 1865, pp. 180, 181. 



278 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

and to go forward to replace Getty, Webb suddenly met 
the enemy. An appalling crash marked the beginning of 
the encounter, and the prolonged and heavy firing indi- 
cated the severity of the struggle. 

Following up this attack, 1 the enemy assailed Wads- 
worth's right, where Cutler was. So violent was the onset 
that Cutler was driven back in the direction of the Wil- 
derness clearing, from which he had come the night before, 
and completely separated from the rest of the division. 
The irruption of some twelve hundred of his men from 
the woods into the open space, together with his report of 
the death of Wadsworth, heavy losses, and the close ap- 
proach of the Confederate skirmishers, 2 spread alarm at 
the army head-quarters; Grant rode off in haste to con- 
sult with Hancock, while the batteries on the high ground 
of the clearing stood ready to open on the enemy sup- 
posed to be pursuing Cutler. 

During the course of the attack in which Webb and 
Cutler received such severe handling, an aide brought 
to Wadsworth a message summoning him to Hancock's 
head-quarters; arrived there, he was informed of Meade's 
despatch placing him under Hancock's orders and of 
the movement of Burnside by way of Chewning's 3 to- 
ward Parker's Store. Hancock now gave Wadsworth 

1 At about eight o'clock, see Schaff's Battle of the Wilderness, p. 235, 
and his despatch in 68 W. R., p. 420. 

2 68 W. R., pp. 451, 459, 460. On the next day Cutler wrote to Warren, in 
explanation of his retreat, as follows (68 W. R., p. 506): "To prevent any 
misapprehension as to why I came out of the woods yesterday morning 
(sic). When they broke the men started back on the route we went in. I 
and all my staff commenced rallying them, but they were within half a mile 
of here before I got anything like order restored. I despatched two staff- 
officers to find General Wadsworth and take his orders; they both ran into 
the rebel skirmishers. I at the same time saw the division flag with horse- 
men and men rallying around it, and moved to it, supposing it was division 
head-quarters. I moved to it and found only two of his aides with his 
orderlies. I immediately went to your head-quarters for instructions. I 
could have moved the men I had rallied to the Plank Road, and should 
have done so but for the above-stated facts. I was very much mortified 
at finding myself separated from the column, and feared that there might 
be some misapprehension about it." 3 68 W. R., p. 441. 



18C4] ON THE PLANK ROAD 279 

Ward's and Webb's brigades of his own corps and a 
brigade (Carruth's) belonging to one of Burnside's divi- 
sions which was coming to Hancock's assistance along 
the Brock Road; with these and the remnants of his 
own brigades, Wadsworth was to push forward on the 
right of the Plank Road, driving off the enemy in front 
of Webb and, if possible, reaching out a hand to Burn- 
side's divisions at Chewning's. 1 

Thus authorized and inspired by Hancock — "bully 
Hancock," as Meade delighted to call him — Wadsworth 
returned to his command, pressing through the crowd 
of wounded men whose blood was staining the red soil 
of the roadway. At the front, in spite of the firing, 
matters were at a stand-still. Most of the regiments 
of Webb's brigade were screened by a dense thicket of 
saplings; at the road he had stationed the Twentieth 
Massachusetts, a small but gallant regiment with a gal- 
lant commander, Major Henry L. Abbott, ordering him 
to hold it at all costs. Opposite them, across a slight 
depression in the road which was continued on the right 
by the space of swampy ground already mentioned, lay 
the enemy, protected in their turn by thickets and, at 
the road, by a row of logs. The distance between the 
two lines was not more than twenty or thirty yards. 2 
Farther to the right, Webb's line was considerably bent 
back. On such ground, as Wadsworth had already 
learned from the events of the early morning, no move- 
ment of a considerable body of troops could be suc- 
cessfully conducted against a force so resolute and elated 
as was now there to meet them; the only hope was 

1 At this time all the information obtained from prisoners and deserters 
went to prove that Longstreet was directly in Hancock's front. It was not 
till nine o'clock and after that Hancock received the false reports of Long- 
street's approach on his left flank which paralyzed his activity for the rest 
of the forenoon. — (See Major Mitchell's addenda to Hancock's report, 67 
W. R., p. 352, and the report of General Brooke, 67 W. R., p. 407, whose 
brigade was sent to strengthen the left.) 

J Lyman's description of the ground at the time of a visit there in April, 
1866, quoted in Va. Campaign, p. 55. 



280 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

to charge down the road, where the open space enabled 
a command to see and to follow its leader, in the hope, 
after repeated trials, of breaking the enemy's line. The 
hope was a forlorn one, but, in view of the peril of further 
Confederate success, what the occasion required was not 
skill but naked courage; Wadsworth, in following his in- 
stinct to lead in person, did the thing that was right and 
necessary. "In the two days of desperate fighting that 
followed our crossing the Rapidan," wrote Humphreys 
of him, 1 "he was conspicuous beyond all others for his 
gallantry, prompter than all others in leading his troops 
again and again into action. In all these combats he 
literally led his men, who, inspired by his heroic bearing, 
continually renewed the contest, which but for him they 
would have yielded." 

Thus it was that, riding forward and coming upon 
the Twentieth Massachusetts, Wadsworth called out to 
Abbott, "Cannot you do something here?" When Ab- 
bott showed hesitation in leaving the post to which Webb 
had assigned him, Wadsworth leaped his horse over the 
slight barrier of logs behind which the men were lying, and 
of course Abbott and his men followed. The terrific fire 
which instantly assailed them it was impossible to stand 
against, and the attempt had to be abandoned. Abbott 
ordered the men to lie down, while he walked back and 
forth before the line. It was not long before he fell, 
mortally wounded. As for Wadsworth, though his horse 
was killed — the second he had lost that morning — he 
himself was unhurt. 

Presently, when Carruth's brigade came up to his 
support, Wadsworth, with the Fifty-seventh Massachu- 
setts, a brand-new regiment commanded by that brilliant 
young soldier Frank Bartlett, made another attempt to 
break the Confederate line. The image of Wadsworth 
stamped upon these men of the Fifty-seventh, now com- 
ing under fire for the first time, shows how that power 

'To Mrs. J. S. Wadsworth, September 3, 1864. 



1864] A LULL IN THE BATTLE 281 

of leadership which he had been a whole lifetime in 
building up was, at this supreme moment of his life, the 
very elemental force of his being. It prevailed, "even 
to drawing men around him who had never seen or 
scarcely heard of him before, holding them almost in 
the jaws of death and impressing them with his own 
lofty spirit of loyalty which rose above all fear of dan- 
ger." * With such inspiration the men pressed forward 
to the attack and lost two hundred and fifty-two men 
in killed and wounded, but the Confederate line proved 
unyielding and the assailants were forced to fall back. 
Not long afterward an order came from Hancock to de- 
sist from further attacks. 2 Word had reached him that 
Longstreet was not in his front but was threatening his 
extreme left, and on account of this report, mistaken 
as it was soon disastrously proved to be, troops were 
withdrawn from the Plank Road and hurried thither. 

For Wadsworth and his hard-fought men the respite 
was welcome. Of the five thousand with whom he had 
set out on the preceding afternoon, less than two thou- 
sand remained; 3 he himself was exhausted. For the last 
three nights he had had little or no sleep, and for two 
days his sustenance had been coffee, hard bread, and pork. 
Since his snatch of breakfast at daylight he had been 
through five hours of the most frightfully severe work that 
man is ever called upon to do. To Monteith, who was 
alone with him for a time, he confessed that he was so 
utterly worn out as to be unfit to command. Indeed, he 
"felt that he ought in justice to himself and his men to 
turn the command over to General Cutler." 4 But Cutler 
and his brigade were far beyond reach. Before long 
Wadsworth's orderly appeared and furnished him some- 
thing to eat, which he shared with his aides. During the 

1 Hist, of the 57th Mass., p. 41. 

2 Letter of Craig W. Wadsworth, in the Wadsworth Memorial Address, 
by L. F. Allen, Jr., p. 26. 

3 G8 W. R., pp. 441, 442. 

4 War Papers of the Wisconsin Commandery of the Loyal Legion, I, 414. 



282 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

lull, too, his heart was gladdened by the sight of Craig, 
who had obtained permission to come from Chancellors- 
ville, where Torbert's cavalry was guarding the trains, to 
stay with his father for an hour or so. Seeing the gen- 
eral's fatigue and shocked to learn of the way in which 
he had been exposing his life, Craig pleaded with him 
to be less reckless. Wadsworth's only answer, says 
Rogers, was to use his soldier's authority and to order 
Craig back to Torbert's command. Ill at ease, the son 
departed, and the father turned to his duty and his 
fate. 

The morning was hot and still, the woods were thick 
with low-hanging smoke, here and there fires smoul- 
dered in the underbrush. The continued quiet of the 
enemy was ominous. It must mean that the storm was 
about to break. But where? Wadsworth despatched 
Monteith to caution his right, still unprotected, for Burn- 
side was nowhere near connecting with it, and sent orders 
to the commanders along the line to fight hard and hold 
their ground. The master-stroke of the great battle — 
the counterpart of Stonewall Jackson's surprise flank at- 
tack through the woods at Chancellorsville — was about 
to be dealt. 

All that Wadsworth ever knew of the catastrophe is 
soon told. Suddenly, a little distance at his left and 
extending well to his rear, the last quarter from which 
attack might be expected, came the sound of the Rebel 
"yai-yai-yai-yai," followed by sharp volleys in rapid 
succession. He sprang to his horse; every one about 
him was alert to meet the crisis. Near at hand he found 
General Webb and sent him across the road to look out 
for the regiments there. Then he seized upon the Thirty- 
seventh Massachusetts, of Eustis's brigade, which was 
coming from the direction of the cross-roads, 1 and or- 

1 It had been sent to the extreme left when Longstreet was supposed to 
be threatening that flank and was now coming back, Hancock's apprehen- 
sions of danger there having been somewhat relieved. 



1864] THE FLANK ATTACK 283 

dered it forward along the road to stay the advance 
of the enemy from that quarter. Thus he hoped to 
check the Confederate approach sufficiently for him to 
wheel his own hne around so that it should be parallel 
to the road and in position to stop the flank attack. 

Making a sweep with his arm from right to left to 
indicate to his regiments a left half-wheel, he himself 
went on to charge with the Thirty-seventh, which, under 
its resolute commander, Colonel Oliver Edwards, broke 
the enemy's first line and struck its second. Wadsworth, 
seeing the deadly fire with which the regiment was en- 
compassed on three sides, ordered Edwards to face his 
men by the rear rank and fight his way back, saying, 
"You have done all I expected a brigade to do." 1 Then 
he dashed back to his own line to get it into position 
while there was yet time, for the broken squads of men 
emerging from the woods on the south side of the road 
and streaming to the rear and the renewing tumult of 
musketry showed that the storm of war from that di- 
rection was driving swiftly toward him. Indeed, the 
two clouds, meeting, were to burst directly upon Wads- 
worth and his command. Nearer and nearer they came, 
as inexorable in their steady approach as if they were a 
force of nature. In the face of disaster thus closing in, 
every second was an agony, a struggle like that of a man 
trying to stay single-handed the doom of flood or fire. 

Suddenly, as Wadsworth was helping to wheel his 
fragmentary line round to the road, a crash came right 
athwart its path. Perrin's Alabama brigade, which had 
been lying on the ground, seeing the opportunity of 
assailing his flank, had risen and discharged a volley 
at close quarters. The Pennsylvania troops which on 
Seminary Hill at Gettysburg had resisted the enemy 
so long and valiantly before yielding now broke at 
the first fire and fled in confusion. Wadsworth's horse, 
however, kept on, and it was not till he was within 

1 Colonel Edwards's Recollections, MS. 



284 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

twenty or thirty feet of his opponents that he could 
control it. Then, as he turned to follow his men, he was 
struck by a shot in the back of the head. Rogers, rid- 
ing by his side, was spattered with his blood. Wads- 
worth fell, and the enemy pressed on in triumph over 
his unconscious body. 1 

To Wadsworth, left dying in the hands of the enemy 
— a fate the thought of which rarely failed to touch a 
soldier with dread — was granted one more opportunity 
of serving his country, for the impression made upon 
those who came into the silent presence of this Northern 
gentleman, found mortally wounded where the battle 
had raged fiercest, was profound and lasting. 

1 Longstreet's flank attack was made possible by the fact that Han- 
cock's centre and right, under Birney and Wadsworth, were considerably in 
advance of the Brock Road, whereas his left, under Gibbon, was along that 
road, being kept there because it was supposed that Longstreet was advanc- 
ing by the Catharpin Road, which lay to the south of the Plank Road. 
(See general map.) A reconnoissance, made by a member of Lee's staff, re- 
vealed the lack of connection between the two parts of Hancock's line and 
also an easy method of approach by way of the unfinished railroad lying 
just south of the Plank Road, this railroad being absolutely unguarded by 
the Federals. Four Confederate brigades advanced along the railroad grad- 
ing, formed in line facing north, and struck the unprotected flank without 
warning. At the signal of their attack, an advance was made by the Con- 
federate troops along the Plank Road. Longstreet and his staff, riding with 
this force, were fired upon by a Virginia regiment of the flanking body which 
mistook them for Federals. The commander whose brigade he was accom- 
panying, General Micah Jenkins, was killed, and Longstreet was severely — 
at the moment it was thought mortally — wounded. The delay caused by 
this disaster lost the Confederates the cross-roads, the key of the battle on 
the Plank Road, for when at last they were ready to attack the breastworks 
on the Brock Road at 4.15 Hancock's troops had rallied and were able to 
repel them successfully. This ended the fighting on this part of the field. 
The final engagement occurred just before sunset, when the right flank of 
the Union army was driven in, with considerable loss in prisoners. 

On May 7 both armies lay behind their intrenchments. The result of 
the two days' fighting was a drawn battle. But Lee knew that henceforth 
he was to face an antagonist of far different mettle from those that he had 
formerly known. And Grant, acknowledging that at last he had met his 
match, but undaunted in courage, with that iron will which was his genius, 
bade Meade issue orders for an advance by the left to Spotsylvania Court 
House. On May 7, at nightfall, the army began the forward movement 
•which ended only when it reached the defences of Petersburg on June 16. 



1864] WADSWORTH WOUNDED 285 

The Confederates remained in possession of the 
ground where he fell, and soon, after the fashion of 
war when the battle line has swept onward, his sword, 
watch, field-glasses, and map were taken from him, the 
two latter coming into the possession of Lieutenant- 
Colonel Sorrel, Longstreet's brilliant young staff-officer, 
who had conducted the flank movement through the 
woods. 1 Presently, Colonel Charles Marshall, a Balti- 
morean on Lee's staff, being sent into the woods on the 
right of the road with an order concerning the advance 
that Lee was preparing to make, heard that a Federal 
general officer was lying mortally wounded not far away. 
"I proceeded to the spot," he wrote 2 later, "and found 
General Wadsworth, whom I knew by a piece of paper 
which was pinned to his coat with his name on it. ... I 
found him lying on his back, his head supported by some- 
thing which I do not now remember, and over him was 
extended a shelter tent, about three feet from the ground, 
the two corners at his head being attached to boughs of 
trees, I think, the other two and the sides being sup- 
ported by muskets. His appearance was perfectly nat- 
ural, and his left hand grasped the stock of one of the 
supporting muskets near the guard. His fingers played 
with the trigger, and occasionally he would push the 
piece from him as far as he could reach, still grasping it 
in his hand. Supposing that he might wish to send some 
message to his family, I addressed him and tendered my 
services. I found, however, that he paid no attention 
to me, and upon further effort to communicate with 
him discovered that he was unconscious of what was 
passing around him. I should not have supposed that 
such was the case from the expression of his face, which 



1 The watch was recovered by the Wadsworth family soon after the war; 
the other articles have recently been restored to Mr. James W. Wadsworth 
through the good offices of Southern members of Congress. 

2 From a letter of Colonel Charles Marshall to a member of the Wads- 
worth family, November 29, 1865. 



286 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

was perfectly calm and natural, the eye indicating con- 
sciousness and intelligence." 

During the afternoon Wadsworth was taken to one of 
the Confederate field hospitals on the Plank Road, a few 
miles in the rear of the lines. Here, after the surgeons 
had examined the wound and found it to be fatal, it 
was his fortune to be watched over by a wounded Union 
officer, Captain Z. Boylston Adams, of the Fifty-sixth 
Massachusetts of Carruth's brigade. Captured in the 
woods not far from where Wadsworth fell, Adams had 
been taken to the same Confederate hospital, and on 
the next morning had been chloroformed and operated 
on for a broken leg. Adams, himself a young surgeon, 
in the story which he has told of his watch over the 
dying soldier, reveals how strangely mingled are tender- 
ness and brutality in that scourge of civilization which 
we call war. 

When I recovered consciousness I found myself 
lying on the ground beneath a tent fly, and at my side 
a stretcher on which lay the form of a Union general 
officer, as shown by his shoulder star. His face was 
familiar. Raising myself upon my elbow I spoke to 
him, but he made no reply. I looked closely at him and 
recognized the man who rode up to us on the Plank 
Road the day before, when my brigade was put into 
the battle as already described. He was rather tall, an 
eminently handsome man of commanding presence, but 
showing gentle breeding. I lifted his eyelids, but there 
was "no speculation in those eyes." I felt his pulse, 
which was going regularly. His breathing was a little 
labored. There was no expression of pain, but occa- 
sionally a deep sigh. His noble features were calm and 
natural, except that his mouth was drawn down at the 
left side. 1 His right arm was evidently paralyzed, which 
indicated that the injury was to the left brain. Exam- 
ining further, I found that a musket ball had entered 

1 As a matter of fact, this slight distortion of General Wadsworth's mouth, 
which shows in some of his photographs, was a paralysis caused when he was 
a young man by driving from Rochester to Geneseo in a furious snow-storm. 



1864] WADSWORTH WOUNDED 287 

the top of his head a little to the left of the median 
line. In his left hand, which lay quietly upon the breast 
of his buttoned coat, he held a scrap of paper on which 
was written, "General James S. Wadsworth." . . . 

Meanwhile the rebel officers thronged the little fly 
and crowded around, curious to see the dying man 
whose name and fame had reached their ears. Num- 
berless questions were put to me. 

"Do you mean to say that this is James S. Wads- 
worth, of New York, the proprietor of vast estates in the 
Genesee Valley, the candidate for governor in 1862?" etc. 

I remarked one very singular fact. He lay appar- 
ently totally unconscious, but whenever, as was not in- 
frequent, some of the curious ones took the paper to 
read the name upon it, he would frown and show rest- 
lessness, and his hand moved to and fro as if in search 
of something, until the paper was put into his fingers, 
when he would grasp it and lay his hand quietly upon 
his breast. I frequently heard the rebels say, "I'd never 
believe that they had such men as that in their army." 
Late in the afternoon a party came in with one vain 
young fellow much bedizened with stars and buttons 
and gold lace, and clearly under the influence of liquor. 
Unmindful of the impress of dignity and nobility of 
character upon the features of the dying man, he swore 
at me and called me a liar for saying that this was James 
S. Wadsworth, declaring that he knew that our officers 
were crazy abolitionists, mercenaries, low politicians, hire- 
lings from foreign armies, etc. . . . 

The surgeons came Saturday night and examined 
General Wadsworth's wound, removing a piece of the 
skull and then probing for the ball (the latter struck 
me as bad surgery). One remarkable thing about the 
case was that the ball had entered near the top of the 
head, had gone forward, and was lodged in the anterior 
lobe of the left side of the brain. Occasionally he heaved 
a deep sigh, but otherwise lay in calm slumber. 1 

Still another man was near Wadsworth in these last 
hours, giving his care not merely from the instinct to 

1 In the Wilderness, Civil War Papers, Massachusetts Commandery of 
the Loyal Legion, II, 389-392. 



288 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

serve the dying which humanizes all of us, but also 
from a deep sense of personal gratitude. 1 

After dark [continues Adams] on the evening of the 
7th of May (the day after the battle) a Virginian, not 
a soldier, came up to the back of the fly and asked me 
about the dying general. Was it really General Wads- 
worth? etc. He said, "My name is Patrick McCracken 
and I have a little farm a few miles out. I have heard 
that General Wadsworth is here wounded, and I want 
to do something for him." He then related how the 
general had saved him from long imprisonment at the 
time Wadsworth was in command of the city of Wash- 
ington. He, McCracken, was arrested and confined in 
the Old Capitol Prison as a rebel spy and had been re- 
leased by the general's order on the representation that 
his family in the Wilderness neighborhood were suffering 
from his absence, and on the promise that, if allowed to 
return home, he would not assist in any way the cause 
of the Confederacy. This promise he assured me he had 
kept, but added that he was now under suspicion and 
was obliged so to act as not to lead the rebel soldiers to 
suspect that he was bringing comforts to the Federal 
wounded. That he came, therefore, only to bring things 
for the rebel wounded, but if I would take some milk or 
anything he could supply, and give it to the general, he 
would be happy. 2 

During the night Lee's troops were in motion, and 
on Sunday morning, May 8, the distant sound of cannon 
from the direction of Spotsylvania Court House signified 
the renewal of the struggle between him and Grant. 
Among the hospital tents the surgeons were still busy, 
and Adams, lying by Wadsworth's side, awaited the ar- 
rival of the faithful Virginian. When McCracken came 
with fresh milk, he and one of the surgeons made a 
vain effort to give nourishment to the dying man. By 
noon the end was plainly near, and the young North- 

1 See p. 142. 

2 Civil War Papers, Massachusetts Commandery of the Loyal Legion, 
II, 396. 



1864] HIS NAME HONORED 289 

era physician, familiar with death as he was, watched, 
deeply moved, until the last breath was drawn. 

McCracken, returning in the afternoon, asked permis- 
sion to take the body and place it in his family burying- 
ground. He was allowed his way, and, having accom- 
plished the task with all the care permitted by the 
means at his disposal, made it his next duty to write to 
Mrs. Wadsworth a simple account of his offices for the 
dead. Montgomery Ritchie went at once to Fredericks- 
burg, whither, through the co-operation of Union and 
Confederate authorities under a flag of truce, the body 
was brought on May 17. From there it was taken to 
Geneseo, with due honors from the national 1 and the 
State governments, and finally it was laid to rest in the 
burying-ground on the hill. 

The shock of loss woke the nation to the wealth of 
service that had been devoted to it by one man. Sin- 
gle deeds of Wadsworth's which it had accepted with 
matter-of-course praise were now seen to make up a 
consecrated whole. Grant, 2 Meade, 3 Humphreys, 4 and 
Hancock 5 testified in no equivocal terms to the example 

1 Wadsworth's commission as brevet major-general of volunteers, " for 
gallant conduct at the battles of Gettysburg and the Wilderness," dates 
the rank from May 6, 1864. 

2 See p. 248. 

3 " I mourned his death as that of a personal friend to whom I had be- 
come warmly attached. His loss to the public service is most serious. 
The moral effect of his example, his years and high social position, his dis- 
tinguished personal gallantry and daring bravery, all tended to place him 
in a most conspicuous position, and to give him an influence over the sol- 
diers which few other men possess." — (General Meade to Mrs. J. S. Wads- 
worth, July 2, 1864.) 

4 See p. 280. 

6 "One of the greatest losses the army has met with was in the death of 
General Wadsworth. His appearance, his earnestness, and his great gallantry 
made him a marked man in the army, and always produced a fine effect 
upon the troops. He behaved nobly on the morning of the 6th of May in 
the Wilderness. . . . On that day he exposed himself, individually, more 
than any soldier. Although not a soldier by education, his example was 
known to be so good that in the reorganization of the Army of the Potomac 
each corps commander desired to have him as commander of division." — 
(Letter of June 25, 1864. Printed in the New York Evening Post, Septem- 
ber 29, 1864.) 



290 WADSWORTH OF GENESEO 

and inspiration of his leadership; friends made in Wash- 
ington and New York through participation in public 
affairs were no whit behind the army; the farmers of 
Geneseo, with whose lives his had been knit for more 
than half a century, knew that they had lost a friend 
whose career had been their welfare. But his distinc- 
tive service was what the Confederate officers who came 
to gaze in wonder at the dying man had grudgingly ad- 
mitted, and what John Lothrop Motley proclaimed in 
his own ringing fashion: "When foreign calumniators 
and domestic traitors spoke of Southern chivalry and 
of Northern mercenaries, the single name of Wadsworth 
was answer enough to all their vulgar babble." ! Lying 
dormant within the soul of a man whose life showed to 
the world as that of an earnest and friendly country 
gentleman, and whose years, if nothing else, might be 
deemed sufficient to exempt him from service in the 
field, dwelt forces that at the call of national danger 
were to make of him a soldier and a hero. To this 
end had been passed those many years of happy and 
wholesome activity in Geneseo; it was in truth their 
consummation when, amid the smoke-filled thickets of 
the Wilderness, his spirit fired by the desperateness of 
the need, he led his men in charge after charge. All 
this Wadsworth, by his heroic death, brought home to 
every heart. And, recognizing how rare and precious 
was the sacrifice thus laid upon the altar, the nation 
mingled gratitude with its grief and renewed its vow 
that such a life should not have been given in vain. 

1 Letter to Mrs. Wadsworth, June 26, 1864. 



APPENDICES 



APPENDIX A 

GENEALOGY 

William Wadsworth, from whom the Wadsworths of Connecticut 
and Geneseo trace their descent, was evidently a man of hardy, ad- 
venturous spirit, with force of character and ability to win and to 
hold the respect of his associates. It is possible that he was the 
William Wadsworth, aged twenty-six, who, in November, 1621, 
came in the Flying Harte to Daniel Gookin's ill-fated settlement in 
Virginia (Hotten's Lists of Emigrants to America, 1600-1700, p. 254). 
If that were the case he must have escaped the massacre in which, 
four months later, 349 of these settlers perished, and returned to 
England. This identification, however, there is not sufficient evi- 
dence to establish. But it is fairly well established J that the Will- 
iam Wadsworth who was one of the founders of Hartford was born 
in Longbuckby, Northamptonshire, about 1595 or 1600, that he 
married, moved to Braintree in Essex, and emigrated thence with 
his four children to this country. 

The records show that on June 22, 1632, he was among the men 
about to leave England who took the oath of allegiance (Hotten, 
p. 150); beyond doubt he and his family were among the 123 passen- 
gers reaching Boston in the Lion, September 16, 1632 (Mass. Hist. 
Coll., Fourth Series, I, 94). He joined what was known as the 
Braintree Company and established himself in Cambridge, where, 
on November 6, 1632, he took the oath as a freeman (N. E. Hist. 
Gen. Register, 1849, III, 91); and in 1635 he was one of the first 
board of selectmen chosen in the town (Paige's History of Cam- 
bridge, p. 21). 

From the time of his arrival William Wadsworth was one of the 
leading men in the group of emigrants who had come from Brain- 
tree and the surrounding towns. They were all devoted followers 
of the Reverend Thomas Hooker, of Chelmsford, eleven miles from 
Braintree, who in 1630 had been obliged to flee from his parish to 
Holland on account of his Puritan teachings. In 1632 Hooker was 
persuaded by them to come to Cambridge to be their minister, and 

1 From investigations made in 1738 and thereabout by Reverend Daniel 
Wadsworth, of Hartford, and Squire James Wadsworth, of Durham. Let- 
ters to them from relatives in Longbuckby and Northampton are in the pos- 
session of Major W. A. Wadsworth, of Geneseo, and of Charles A. Brinley, 
Esq., of Philadelphia. 

293 



294 APPENDIX A 

in 1636 they followed his lead through the wilderness to found the 
settlement of Hartford on the Connecticut River. Here, in 1644, 
William Wadsworth married as his second wife Elizabeth Stone, 
sister of Reverend Samuel Stone, the associate and successor of 
Hooker. By her he had six children, one of whom was Captain 
Joseph Wadsworth of Charter Oak fame. Of William Wadsworth's 
position in Hartford Savage says that "he seems to have lived in 
the highest esteem; no man more often chosen representative, for 
between Oct., 1656, and May, 1675 (his last appearance), hardly a 
year misses his services." — (Gen. Diet, of N. E., IV, 381.) 

The line of descent from William Wadsworth to James S. Wads- 
worth, of Geneseo, is shown by the table facing p. 293, which gives 
also the relation between this branch of the family and that of 
Jeremiah Wadsworth. The information drawn from Two Hundred 
and Fifty Years of the Wadsworth Family in America is corrected 
and supplemented by manuscript records in the possession of Major 
W. A. Wadsworth, of Geneseo. 



APPENDIX B 

JAMES WADSWORTH'S METHODS OF AGRICULTURE 

(Extracts from the article by Professor James Renwick in the "Monthly 
Journal of Agriculture" for October, 1846) 

The estate of the Wadsworths, reserved in compliance with the 
principle originally adopted, that their capital should not be with- 
drawn from the region in which it was accumulated, was partly held in 
their own hands, partly leased, and partly cultivated "upon shares." 
The Home Farm, cultivated under their own immediate direction, 
comprises upward of two thousand acres, of which more than half is 
a rich alluvial flat of the Genesee River. This portion was for many 
years the only part from which any profit was derived; and to the 
raising and feeding of cattle, of -which mention has already been 
made, was added the culture of hemp, for which crop the inexhaust- 
ible fertility of the soil was admirably adapted. The hilly land which 
borders the alluvial soil on the east was, in its original state, what is 
styled an "oak opening," namely, a swelling surface studded with 
gigantic black oak-trees and free from undergrowth. The latter 
had been kept down by the fires which the Indians were accustomed 
to light in it, for the purpose of rendering it a profitable hunting- 
ground. Where this custom is put a stop to, young trees and bushes 
speedily make their appearance, and unless cultivation of some de- 
scription be applied the whole soon becomes a tangled thicket. 
This description of land was at first considered to be of little value. 
When, however, the state of the Spanish peninsula led to the impor- 
tation of considerable flocks of Merino sheep, the Wadsworths were 
speedily among the largest proprietors of animals of that species, 
which were fed upon the uplands; and the high price which the 
fleeces long bore upon the seaboard sufficed to defray the cost of 
the tedious transportation to the navigable waters of the Hudson. 
Experience has shown that the oak openings, so much underrrated 
at first, are better fitted for the growth of wheat than any other 
soils. But it is not surprising that this valuable property should have 
so tardily developed as to be considered by some a fortuitous dis- 
covery. It was not until the Erie Canal was opened that wheat 
would yield a return of the bare freight from the Genesee River to 
a market, and hence there was no inducement to cultivate more of 
that grain than could be consumed on the spot. In spite, however, 
295 



296 APPENDIX B 

of the admirable adaptation of the upland of the Home Farm to the 
production of wheat, grazing was to the very last the principal ob- 
ject. This application to a purpose which might at first sight ap- 
pear the least profitable was dictated by the prudence of Mr. Wads- 
worth, who was aware that it was impossible by means of hired labor 
to cultivate grain on as good terms as could be done by those who 
held their own ploughs. For similar reasons root crops never formed 
a part of his system of husbandry. 

The leasehold lands were at first granted to the settlers for the 
term of two joint lives and the survivor, the parties named being 
usually the settler and his wife. By mutual agreement these were 
subsequently changed to leases for a term of years, and this became, 
from that time, the form of the original contract. These farms usu- 
ally comprised each about one hundred acres. The rent was in most 
cases fixed by a money standard, but it was many years before money 
began to pass from the tenant to the landlord. The convenience of 
the former demanded that it should be received in the product of the 
farm or worked out in labor. . . . 

Larger farms than those of one hundred acres were leased for 
shorter terms, on the conditions of the payment of a share, usually 
one-third, of the grain crops, and a stipulated sum for the portions 
not under the plough. The rotation of the crops on property of this 
description, and the manner of cultivation, required much individual 
attention from the proprietor, and, although more profitable to him 
than lands leased in the other manner, were far more troublesome 
to manage. 

In the collection of his rents, Mr. Wadsworth looked for the same 
punctuality and good faith from his tenants that he was accustomed 
to exhibit in his own dealings with others. Hence, with the improv- 
ident or careless he gained the reputation of severity. That this 
was unmerited, none acquainted with his active benevolence and 
equanimity of temper can doubt. The knowledge on the part of 
his tenants of the steadiness of his course in this respect was, to the 
industrious, rather a benefit than an injury, for it compelled them to 
a close calculation of their profits; and the requirement of punc- 
tuality in payment prevented the careless from accumulating debts 
beyond their ability to discharge. 

Many of the farms held for long terms of years reverted to Mr. 
Wadsworth before his death; and, while the land itself was generally 
in good order, the tenants had, for the most part, made such profit 
from the occupation as to be in comfortable circumstances. From 
inquiries and comparisons made upon the spot it was inferred that 
the tenants of his estate were upon the whole more successful in their 
pursuits, enjoyed a greater share of comfort, and laid by larger prof- 
its than those who purchased upon credit lands of equal quality in 
the neighborhood. — (Pages 150, 151.) 

We have already spoken in part of the manner in which his home 



APPENDIX B 297 

farm was conducted. Devoting it chiefly to grazing, the sources 
from which his stock was derived varied with the progress of settle- 
ment. Drawn at first from New England, the supplies of young 
neat-cattle were finally obtained from Ohio and States still farther 
West. This, of course, did not preclude the breeding of stock upon 
his own farm; and here he manifested a sense of practical utility by 
which it would have been well had others, who have devoted large 
sums to the obtaining of foreign breeds, been influenced. The breed 
of his native valley of the Connecticut was that which he preferred, 
and upon his rich pastures it has attained an excellence which may 
be envied by those who have resorted to foreign races. It so hap- 
pens that the stock of the earlier settlers of New England was, from 
the fact of all the vessels taking their final departure from the south- 
western ports of the mother country, derived from the very county, 
Devonshire, where the best of the improved breeds of England have 
their origin. This has been thoroughly acclimatized, and although 
it may have degenerated in barren soils, and for want of care, the 
valley of the Connecticut still possesses it, rather improved than 
fallen from its original good qualities. 

His attention to fine-wooled sheep was governed by similar prac- 
tical and judicious views. He had no share in the mania under the 
influence of which Merino rams were sought for at the price of thou- 
sands of dollars; but no sooner did the price fall to reasonable limits 
than he became the possessor of the largest flock in the State; and 
he did not condemn it to the butcher when the unreasonable expec- 
tation of sudden and enormous profits, which others entertained, 
were proved to be fallacious. — (Page 155.) 



APPENDIX C 

THE WADSWORTH ESTATE IN 1850 

(From Notes on North America, by Professor James F. W. Johnston, 
1851) 

This gentleman [James S. Wadsworth] himself farms 1,000 acres, and 
clears from 3 to 1%. per cent on the whole capital employed, includ- 
ing the market value of the land and of the buildings and stock 
upon it. For a gentleman farmer this would be a very fair return; 
but it is scarcely enough in a country where land gives no political 
and little social influence, and where, by lending his money and 
doing nothing, a man can obtain 7 per cent certain. 

Mr. Wadsworth informed me that the system of renting farms is 
not unpopular in his district; that his farms used to be let nominally 
on shares but in reality at a fixed grain rent. The produce was esti- 
mated at 18 bushels of wheat an acre, and he took one-third, or 6 
bushels, as the rent. Latterly he has been taking 8 bushels, and the 
farmers pay it readily. The rotation he prescribes is wheat followed 
by two years clover, cut for hay or eaten off the first year, and eaten 
off or ploughed in the second. For the wheat land he takes 6 or 8 
bushels of grain of the best quality, delivered in kind at a ware- 
house on the canal, where it is always sure of an immediate and ready 
market; for the clover land he takes a money-rent of two or three 
dollars an acre, as may be fixed by inspection of an agent, every 
year. . . . 

On the whole, under this system of management Mr. Wadsworth 
calculates that his land yields him five per cent upon its market value 
in the form of rent, besides which he has the benefit of the continual 
rise in the value of land, which has added enormously to the value 
of this property since it came into the hands of his family. But this 
return is scarcely advantageous enough to present an inducement 
to moneyed men of the Old World to invest their capital in the pur- 
chase of large tracts of land in the New. The possession of this land 
carries with it little increased consideration and confers no political 
influence. On the contrary, in most places it is a cause of jealousy, 
distrust, and dislike. The feeling is that the living man, and not 
the dead chattels that he owns, ought to influence the destinies of 
the country.— (I, 206, 207.) 

298 



APPENDIX D 

SPEECH OF JAMES S. WADSWORTH AS CHAIRMAN OF 

THE DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 

AT SYRACUSE, JULY 24, 1856 

(From the Proceedings of the Convention) 

I thank you, gentlemen of the convention, for the distinguished 
honor which you have conferred upon me. The occasion which has 
brought us together is one of deep and abiding interest to us and 
to those whom we represent. If the result of our deliberations should 
separate us from some of the political associates with whom we have 
passed the best years of our lives, we cannot weigh too cautiously 
every step we take. But, gentlemen, if in the pursuit of wisdom to 
direct our course, we go back to the early days of the republic — to 
the infancy of the great Republican party — to the days of Jefferson 
(a man, let me add, whose memory is not less dear to our hearts be- 
cause, if he were living to-day, he would be driven an exile from his 
native State, and would not be allowed to emigrate to the vast do- 
main which he secured for his country west of the Mississippi) — 
if we go back to those times and drink deep at the fountains of free- 
dom it will be our own gross error if we go far astray. 

Or, coming down to a later period — to the times of Silas Wright, 
of Michael Hoffman, of Samuel Young, men who have gone from 
among us but were yet of our own time, with whom we have fought 
side by side, who never betrayed us, and whom we never deserted— if 
we adopt the principles we have so often heard so earnestly ex- 
pressed from their own lips, if we stand where they stood, we need 
have no fears for the result. Those men were Democrats because 
they believed in democracy and not because it was the name of a 
platform placed under them or over them. They did not look to 
Washington for advice or to Cincinnati for principles. They gathered 
wisdom from the honest and sure instincts of the popular mind and 
strength from the popular will. If we follow in their footsteps we 
may safely abide the verdict of November. 

I had the honor, gentlemen, to be a delegate to the Democratic 
convention which met in this city prior to the election of 1848. We 
laid down then and there, as one of the foundation stones of the 
Democracy of New York, opposition to the extension of slavery. I 
see around me many of the men who were with me delegates to the 
299 



300 APPENDIX D 

Baltimore convention of that year. I claim that we proved ourselves 
worthy of the great trust reposed in us by the radical Democracy of 
New York when we came out of that convention rather than see 
the principle of our constituents trampled in the dust. We came 
home and appealed to those who had sent us there. We were sus- 
tained by one hundred thousand of the Democratic electors of New 
York. A few men have since been seduced from us by the allure- 
ments of office and the flatteries of power; but if we stand where we 
stood then, on the same eternal principles, I firmly believe that we 
shall find the people where we found them then. For one I shall 
impatiently but confidently await the great verdict of the country 
upon the stand I trust we shall take here to-day. 

I shall not, gentlemen, further detain you, except to ask your 
friendly aid and, if need be, your forbearance in the discharge of 
the duties you have imposed upon me. 



APPENDIX E 

TROOPS LEFT BY McCLELLAN FOR THE DEFENCE OF 
WASHINGTON 

Naturally, Wadsworth's statements in his letter to Stanton of 
April 2 were attacked by McClellan, but the evidence submitted 
in his report (W. R., V, 60-64) is, except in the case of the light ar- 
tillery, rather general. The facts with regard to the troops men- 
tioned in his list on page 22 of W. R., V, as nearly as they can now 
be ascertained, are as follows: 

1. Infantry. — The only deduction to be made from McClellan's 
list, which is substantially accurate, is the Fifty-fourth Pennsylvania, 
which was joined to Colonel Miles 's "railroad brigade" in Mary- 
land. The Ninety -first New York is an error for the One Hundred 
and Second New York. The Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania and the 
Twelfth Virginia consisted of one company each; the Thirty -seventh 
New York of two companies. 

2. Cavalry. — Of the four regiments of dismounted cavalry men- 
tioned by McClellan as being "near Washington" two were at Perry - 
ville, Maryland, at the mouth of the Susquehanna, where they re- 
mained, one till May 11, one till August; the third did not leave 
New York till May 5; the fourth began to leave Pennsylvania on 
April 2 and, after assembling at Baltimore, reached Washington on 
April 25. 

3. Heavy Artillery. — Second New York Heavy Artillery is given 
by McClellan as "Light"; Third Battalion of New York Heavy is 
omitted. 

4. Light Artillery. — It is here that McClellan's reply to Wads- 
worth's statements is explicit. He gives (W. R., V, 61) a letter from 
General W. F. Barry, his chief of artillery, which contains a list 
showing that six batteries, thirty-two guns in all, and the Sixteenth 
New York Battery, which having just arrived was unequipped with 
either guns or horses, were left for the defence of Washington. Be- 
fore the McDowell court of inquiry General Barry testified that of 
the six batteries three were "fully equipped and fit for service" 
and three had an insufficient number of horses. — (W. R., XII, pt. 1, 
pp. 239, 240.) Of the first three, however, one (Battery A, Second 
Battalion, New York Artillery) was presently attached to Richard- 
son's division of the Army of the Potomac; another (Battery B, 
Second Battalion, New York Artillery) to Williams's division of 

301 



302 APPENDIX E 

Banks's army, and then to Doubleday's brigade, Army of the Rappa- 
hannock (W. R., XII, pt. 3, p. 311, return of May 31); the third 
(Battery L, Second New York Artillery) was stripped of over sixty- 
nine of its one hundred and ten horses to fit out batteries that were to 
take the field, and was then left behind. — (See The Flushing Battery, 
pp. 23, 24; and also Barry's testimony.) As to the ease of supply- 
ing new horses, concerning which General Barry was so confident, 
the battery which had been stripped acquired with difficulty a poor 
supply that were broken to harness and accustomed to drill only 
after much labor. As a matter of fact, none of the batteries imper- 
fectly equipped was able to respond to the false alarm of April 19. 

Finally, General Barry admitted in his testimony that the list 
of seven batteries was not obtained from personal knowledge, but 
was sent to him after he had left for the peninsula by the commander 
of the field artillery in Washington, who still considered himself as 
belonging to the Army of the Potomac. Thus General Barry's let- 
ter, which is the only piece of specific testimony presented by Mc- 
Clellan, is valueless. — (On this whole subject, see the records of the 
various organizations as given in State and regimental histories, and 
in Dyer's Compendium of the Rebellion; the testimony before the 
Committee on the Conduct of the War given by General Wadsworth, 
pt. 1, pp. 251-253, by General Hitchcock, pp. 303-305; the testimony 
given before the McDowell court of inquiry by General Wadsworth, 
W. R., XII, pt. 1, pp. 112-115, by General Hitchcock, pp. 218-221, 
by General Barry, pp. 239-241; McClellan's report, W. R., V, 60- 
64.) 

Unfortunately, no light is thrown on this part of the subject by 
the monthly return of March 31, 1862, which General Wadsworth 
summarized in the subjoined letter. In that return the statement of 
the number of guns of heavy, field, and mountain artillery is puz- 
zlingly incomplete; in the column marked "horses" there is only 
one entry for all arms; one horse, "unserviceable," in the Eighty- 
eighth Pennsylvania. I have emended Wadsworth's summary to 
remedy errors in copying, and have added explanations to help in 
a more complete identification of the commands; I have not been 
able, however, to make Wadsworth's and Barry's lists of light artil- 
lery agree. 

The letter in question was printed in the New York Times of 
May 19, 1863, and was the second and more important of the two 
letters in which Wadsworth replied to attacks made on him in the 
New York World. The letter is as follows : 

To ilie Editor of the New York Times : 

I regret to have to trouble you again to correct the misappre- 
hension that seems to exist as to the troops assigned to the defence 
of Washington in March and April, 1862. The enclosed article, 
from the New York World, impeaching my veracity, reached me the 



APPENDIX E 303 

day before I left my command, on a short leave of absence, and as I 
passed through Washington I procured copies of the monthly re- 
turns of the troops under my command at that time. The follow- 
ing is a condensed statement of the return for the 31st March, 1862, 
showing the troops in and about Washington under my command: 

First New Jersey Cavalry 783 

Fifth United States Cavalry (part of a company) .... 32 

Fourth Pennsylvania Cavalry 404 

ARTILLERY 

Battery C & K, First New York (light); two batteries 
Rocket Battalion [Batteries A and B, Second Battalion 
New York Artillery, light] ; Battery L, Second New York 

Artillery [light] 788 

Second Battalion [regiment] New York Artillery [heavy, not 

including Battery L] 932 

Third Battalion New York Artillery [heavy] 352 

Fourth New York Artillery [heavy] 552 

Eleventh and Twelfth Batteries New York Artillery [light] . 259 
Dickinson Light Artillery [Sixteenth New York Battery] . . 143 
One Hundred and Twelfth Pennsylvania Volunteer Artil- 
lery [heavy] 804 

Fourteenth Massachusetts Volunteer Artillery [heavy] . . 1,326 
First Wisconsin Artillery [heavy] 70 

Total 5,226 

INFANTRY 

Twenty-sixth, Thirty-first [error for Thirty-seventh, two com- 
panies, including detachment of Fourth United States Artillery serv- 
ing as infantry], Fifty-ninth, Seventy-sixth, Eighty-sixth, Ninety- 
fourth, Ninety-fifth, Ninety-ninth [error for Ninety-seventh], One 
Hundred and First, One Hundred and Second, One Hundred and 
Fourth New York Volunteers; Tenth New Jersey Volunteers; 
Twenty-sixth [one company], Fifty-sixth, Eighty-eighth, Ninety- 
first, Ninety-ninth, One Hundred and Seventh Pennsylvania Volun- 
teers; Twelfth Virginia Volunteers (one company); Second District 
Columbia Volunteers. — Aggregate Infantry, 13,146. 

Total of all arms present for duty, 19,591 [enlisted men only; 
including officers, 20,769]. 

As to a portion of the cavalry and artillery above enumerated, I 
was not at the time sure that it was intended for my command, and 
some of it was ordered away in a few days ; but I embrace it in this 
statement, as it was within my command at that time. In my re- 
turn to the Secretary of War, on the 2d April, I stated the number at 
19,025. At the end of April the returns show a force of 19,475. I 
had not time to examine the daily returns. They, of course, fluctu- 



304 APPENDIX E 

ated. It was not the numerical strength of my command that I 
complained of— many of the regiments were new — some of them had 
just reached Washington and received their arms. Others had ele- 
ments of weakness and disorganization within themselves which it is 
impossible to refer to here — such as incompetent officers, officers 
under arrest, etc. As I stated in my former communication to you, 
Senator Chandler's language, that I had "no guns on wheels," was 
incorrect — I had no artillery mounted and available for service. 

From this force, I was ordered by General McClellan to detail 
four regiments, good ones, two to Richardson's division, one to 
Heintzelman's old division, and one to Hooker's division. I was fur- 
ther ordered by him to send four thousand men to Manassas and 
Warrenton. It had been previously understood that Banks was to 
occupy that point. The First Connecticut Heavy Artillery, garri- 
soning the forts in front of and above Alexandria, and the Third 
New York Artillery (heavy) garrisoning the forts opposite George- 
town, had just been detached from my command. The Fourteenth 
Massachusetts Artillery was not assigned to me to replace any of 
these regiments, as it was previously under my command, but it 
was ordered by me to garrison part of the works evacuated by the 
First Connecticut. The Ninety-seventh New York, a new regiment, 
was ordered to Fort Corcoran and to the works opposite Georgetown. 
General Banks was, at the date of my report, in the Valley of the 
Shenandoah, and the duty assigned to him was to occupy it and to 
guard the approach through it to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. 
Two ranges of mountains were between him and Washington, al- 
though one light brigade of his (Abercrombie's) was, I believe, on 
this side of the Bull Run Mountains; two or three regiments of this 
command came to Washington very soon after to be discharged, 
being twelve months' volunteers from Indiana. General Dix had a 
small force at Baltimore, two light regiments guarding the railroad 
thence to Washington, and one at Annapolis, guarding the depot 
there. With these exceptions all the troops south of Baltimore were 
under my command, and embraced in my statement, which shows, 
so far as I know, all the troops in or about Washington assigned 
to or available for its defence. What troops General McClellan re- 
ferred to in his statement before the McDowell court of inquiry, as 
assigned to defend Washington, other than those above referred to, 
I have no means of knowing, or even conjecturing. Your obedient 
servant, 

JAS. S. WADSWORTH, Brigadier-General. 



APPENDIX F 

SPEECH OF GENERAL WADSWORTH AT WASHINGTON, 
FRIDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 26, 1862 

I thank you, gentlemen, for the honor you do me in making this 
visit. I suppose I may assume that you come to congratulate me 
upon having received from the Convention of the State of New York 
— a Convention composed of the truest friends of the country and 
the most earnest supporters of the war — on having received from 
that Convention the nomination to the distinguished position of 
Governor of the State of New York. While I cannot allow myself 
to overestimate the compliment of this nomination, while I cannot 
allow myself to misunderstand it or to receive it in any considerable 
degree as a personal compliment, I need not say how highly I appre- 
ciate it. I have not earned it, gentlemen, by any public service of 
my own in my own native State. I have never held any public po- 
sition or any official position there. I am known only as a citizen 
who has pursued his avocations during most of his life entirely in the 
privacy of home. 

But the gentlemen who have brought forward my name have done 
so largely on trust. While I cannot claim that this nomination is 
the result of any services which I have rendered, or is a reward for 
any merit in me, I do claim for it significance and meaning plainly 
marked. I have been brought forward, gentlemen, by men who are 
in earnest, and they brought me forward because they believed that 
I was in earnest. (Cries of "Good!" and cheers.) These men believe 
that this rebellion can be crushed, and they intend that it shall be 
crushed. (Applause.) They intend to uphold this noble Republi- 
can Government of ours. They intend to hold together this coun- 
try, hold it together at whatever cost of fife, of blood, of suffering, 
of treasure. At whatever cost, they intend to hold it together — to 
make it desolate, devastated, if need be, 1 but to hold it together, 
one country, and that a free country — ("Good," and cheers) — a 
land of refuge, as it has been in days past, for the oppressed from all 
parts of the world. 

1 " General Wadworth's speech seems to us shocking when he speaks of 
choosing devastation and extermination to division." — (Duchess of Argyll to 
Charles Sumner, October 20, 1862. Pierce-Sumner papers. Harvard College 
Library.) 

305 



306 APPENDIX F 

They have brought me forward, gentlemen, as their standard- 
bearer, because I believe what they believe, I think what they 
think, I feel as they feel, on these great questions. They do not 
wish, they do not intend, to survive the dismemberment of their 
country, and they do not believe that I wish to survive it, or that 
my children should survive it. (Cheers.) These are the thoughts 
which have influenced them in bringing me forward, and I trust 
that in that light, however poor may be my claim in other respects, 
I shall receive the approbation and support of the sons of New 
York who may be here. (Cries, "You will.") 

I do not propose, gentlemen, on this occasion — it would be 
obviously improper in me, in the position which I now occupy — to 
enter at large into a discussion of the conduct of the war, or the 
policy of the Government. Sufficient for us to know, gentlemen, 
that the Government has given us the most solemn and repeated 
assurances — and it is sustained by the public sentiment of the loyal 
people who gather to its support — that the war will be prosecuted 
with the utmost military energy, and that all the means, agencies, 
and appliances of honorable war will be availed of to carry it on and 
bring this struggle to an end. 

It would have been criminal folly in the Government to have 
overlooked one great element of Southern society — an element which 
may be, and will be, according as we use it — an element of weakness 
or an element of strength. It would have been criminal folly in 
the Government to have overlooked or forgotten the fact that we are 
fighting against an aristocracy, base and selfish, and still a powerful 
aristocracy; and it would have been worse than folly to suppose 
that they could put down the rebellion and save the aristocracy. 
A year and a half of bitter experience has proved to us that we can- 
not do that — that we shall fail if we attempt such a thing, and fail 
ignobly. 

We have moistened a hundred battle-fields with the blood of our 
sons. We are surrounded with hospitals, with the sick and suffering, 
with wounded and dying men. Almost every household in the North 
is filled with gloom and weeping for some beloved member, who has 
gone forth to return no more; and what have we gained? Is it 
enough that we are safe on this side of the Potomac? Are we re- 
paid for all our sacrifices by this consolation? I think not. And 
yet, gentlemen, what has this powerful aristocracy done for us that 
it is entitled to our sympathy? What has it done with this Gov- 
ernment, but use it for its own aggrandizement, and failing in that, 
rise up to overthrow it? 

I have never failed, gentlemen, previous to the outbreak of this 
rebellion, on any public and proper occasion, to declare my earnest 
devotion to the Constitution of the United States, and my desire to 
uphold it, with what are called its compromises and concessions in 
behalf of Slavery. But, gentlemen, Secession and War, bloody and 



APPENDIX F 307 

relentless war, have changed our relations to that which is the cause 
and the source of the war. (Applause, and cries of "That's it.") 
We have the right, we are bound moreover, by the most solemn obli- 
gations of duty, to use this agency, so far as we can, to put an end to 
this struggle, and to save the lives of white men who are perishing 
by thousands in this country. 

How long are we to bear the insolence of this Southern aristoc- 
racy? Have we not borne it long enough? Has it not long enough 
disturbed and distracted our councils, and paralyzed our energies? 
Has it not long enough paralyzed the energies of the country? Nay, 
more, has it not long enough, in the eyes of the other civilized nations 
of the world, covered us with infamy? (A voice — "It has even so.") 
But, be that as it may, the issue is made up, and we must conquer 
or be conquered by it. This struggle is already far advanced — it is 
near its end. We are in the pangs of dissolution, or we are in the 
pangs of exorcism. If we would save ourselves, we must cast out 
the devil which has tormented and disgraced us from the hour of 
our national birth. ("Good, good.") 

We want peace, but more than we want peace, we want a country. 
We want peace, but we want an honorable peace, a permanent peace, 
a solid peace. When we have achieved that, we shall commence on 
a career of prosperity such as we have never known, and such as the 
world has never before witnessed. We shall spring up, at one bound, 
to be the mightiest and the happiest people on the face of the earth. 
(Cheers.) I thank you, gentlemen, for the patience with which you 
have listened to me. (Prolonged, enthusiastic cheering.) 



APPENDIX G 

GENERAL WADSWORTH'S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE OF 

HIS NOMINATION AS CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR 

BY THE REPUBLICAN-UNION CONVENTION 

Washington, October 2, 1862. 
Hon. Henry J. Raymond, President, etc.: 

Dear Sir: — I have the pleasure to acknowledge the receipt of 
your letter of September 29, informing me that the Convention held 
at Syracuse on the 24th of that month, composed of men resolved 
to maintain the integrity of the Union, irrespective of their previous 
party associations, had done me the honor of placing my name 
before the electors of the State of New York for the office of Gov- 
ernor. 

I respectfully accept the nomination. 

I cordially agree with the Convention in the sentiments expressed 
in their resolutions, and, if elected, I shall zealously labor to carry 
out their wishes as therein defined. 

I might, perhaps with propriety, stop here, but as the duties of 
my present position will not allow me to return to New York for 
some time, and possibly not until after the election has been held, 
I ask your indulgence while I express briefly my views as to the ques- 
tions involved in the canvass. 

I think I cannot be mistaken in assuming that the election will 
turn upon the necessity of sustaining our National Government in 
its efforts to uphold itself, and maintain its territorial integrity, 
and especially upon the Proclamation of the President, issued to 
that end, and referred to in the fourth resolution of the Convention. 

I entirely approve of that Proclamation and commend it to the 
support of the electors of New York, for the following reasons : — 

1. It is an effectual aid to the speedy and complete suppression 
of the rebellion. 

Six or eight millions of whites, having had time to organize their 
government, and arm their troops, fed and supported by four mill- 
ions of slaves, presents the most formidable rebellion recorded in 
history. 

Strike from this rebellion the support which it derives from the un- 
requited toil of these slaves, and its foundation will be undermined. 

2. It is the most humane method of putting down the rebellion, 
the history of which has clearly proved that the fears of slave insur- 

308 



APPENDIX G 309 

rections and massacres are entirely unfounded. — While the slaves 
earnestly desire freedom, they have shown no disposition to injure 
their masters. They will cease to work for them without wages, 
but they will form, throughout the Southern States, the most peace- 
ful and docile peasantry on the face of the earth. 

The Slaveowners once compelled to labor for their own support, 
the war must cease, and its appalling carnage come to an end. 

3. The emancipation once effected, the Northern States would be 
forever relieved, as it is right they should be, from the fears of a great 
influx of African laborers, disturbing the relations of those North- 
ern industrial classes who have so freely given their lives to the 
support of the Government. 

This done, and the whole African population will drift to the 
South, where it will find a congenial climate, and vast tracts of land 
never yet cultivated. 

I forbear to enter into the discussion of the great increase of 
trade to the Northern States and the whole commercial world, which 
would result from the wants of four millions of free paid laborers, 
over the same number held as heretofore in Slavery. 

I forbear also to enter into the question of the ultimate vast in- 
crease in the production of the great Southern staples. This is not 
a time to consider questions of profit. It will long be remembered, 
to the great honor of the merchants, bankers, and manufacturers of 
the North, that, giving the he to the calumnies of slave-breeding 
aristocrats, who charge them with being degraded and controlled by 
the petty profits of traffic, they have met the sacrifices of this 
great struggle with a cheerfulness and promptness of which history 
furm'shes no parallel. 

Nor is the question now before us one of philanthropy alone, 
sacred as are the principles therein involved; nor is it a question of 
abstract ideas, involving an unprofitable discussion of the equality 
of races. It is simply a question of war, of National life or death, 
and of the mode in which we can most surely and effectually uphold 
our Government and maintain its unity and supremacy. 

Our foreign enemies, for it is not to be disguised that we have 
such, reproach us with waging a territorial war. So we do, but that 
territory is our country. For maintaining its greatness and power 
among the nations of the earth, by holding it together, they hate us. 
We can bear that; but if we were to yield to {heir suggestions, and 
submit to its dismemberment, they would forever despise us. 

This great domain, from the Lakes to the Gulf, from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific, one country; governed by one idea — freeedom — is 
yet destined to dictate terms, if need be, to the world in arms, and 
I hold that man to be a traitor and a coward, who, under any de- 
feats, any pressure of adversity however great, any calamities how- 
ever dire, would give up one acre of it. 

It is more than a year since I left our State. Great changes 



310 APPENDIX G 

have taken place within that period. Costly victories and disas- 
trous defeats have, in the vicissitudes of war, befallen our arms. 
Bereavements and destitution have overtaken families. 

I can only judge of the spirit of my fellow-citizens of New York, 
by that of her gallant sons who have rushed to the field. These I 
have seen in great numbers, and particularly those who have been 
in the hospitals within my command. 

Among these brave men, feeble and exhausted by disease, tort- 
ured and mutilated by cruel wounds, I have never yet heard the 
first word of despair, the first sigh of regret, that they had given 
health and life to their country. 

If we may judge of the spirit of those they have left at home, 
and who may yet be called to the field, by the heroic temper of these 
men, we have nothing to fear as to the result. 

In the solemn verdict of the ballot, and the deadly conflict of 
battle, this Government of the people will be sustained. 

I beg that you will accept for yourself, and convey to the mem- 
bers of the Convention over which you presided, my sincere thanks 
for the great honor which they did me in placing my name before the 
electors of New York, for a position so responsible and distinguished 
as that of Governor of the State. 

I am, Sir, with great respect, truly yours, 

JAMES S. WADSWORTH. 



INDEX 



INDEX 

Military organizations (army corps, divisions, brigades, cavalry, artillery) are given 
under the army of which they formed a part, as Army of the Potomac, Army of 
Northern Virginia, etc. Regimental organizations are to be found under "Regi- 
ments." For Wadsworth's brigade consult Army of the Potomac, McDowell's divi- 
sion; for Wadsworth's division consult Army of the Potomac, First Corps and Fifth 
Corps. 



Abbott, Maj. H. L., 279, 280. 

Adair, Mrs. Cornelia. See Cornelia 

Wadsworth, daughter of J. S. W. 
Adams, Capt. Z. B., 286; quoted, 286- 

288. 
Alexander, D. A. S., quoted, 41, 47, 163. 
Alexander, Lieut.-Col, 236. 
American Freedmen's Inquiry Commis- 
sion, 240. 
Ames, Brig.-Gen. A., 215. 
Anderson, Maj. -Gen. R. H., 272. 
Andrew, John A., 239. 
Andros, Sir Edmund, 2. 
Antietam, battle of, 153, 162. 
Archer, Brig.-Gen. J. J., 211, 213, 216. 
Argyll, Duchess of, 305 n. 
Arlington, 65, 68, 81, 82. 
Armies, Confederate: 

Beauregard's army, 69, 70. 
Johnston's army, 70, 74, 83, 97, 99, 100, 
104, 105 n., 112, 121. 
Jackson's brig., 71, 72, 74. 
Elzey's brig., 74. 
Army of the Valley (Jackson), 115, 124, 

127. 
Army of Northern Virginia (Lee), 193, 
195, 198, 216, 228-235, 238 n., 254, 
259, 261, 288. 

Longstreet's Corps, 184-187, 193, 198, 
236 n., 254, 262 n., 265, 272, 274, 
277, 279 n., 281, 282 n., 284 n. 
Pickett's div., 228, 277. 
Field's div., 274, 277. 

Jenkins's brig., 284 n.; Law's 
brig., 276; Gregg's brig., 274- 
276; Benning's brig., 276. 
Kershaw's div., 274, 277. 
Hill's Corps, 198, 206 n., 216, 235 n., 
259, 261 n. ( 267-272. 



Anderson's div., 273. 
Perrin's brig., 283. 
Heth's div., 194, 206 n., 208,212 n., 
216, 222, 267, 269. 
Archer's brig., 211, 213; Brock- 
enbrough's brig., 216; Da- 
vis's brig., 208-211; Petti- 
grew's brig., 216. 
Pender's div., 206 n., 217, 222. 
Lane's brig., 217, 222 n., Thom- 
as's brig., 217; Perrin's brig., 
217. 219, 221; Scales's brig., 
217, 219-221. 
Wilcox's div., 267, 269, 270, 272. 
McGowan's brig., 274. 
Ewell's Corps, 195, 198, 204, 206 n., 
212 n., 223, 255, 259, 261, 265, 267, 
271. 

Early's div., 206 n., 215, 218 n., 
264. 

Hays's brig., 227; Gordon's brig., 
266 n., Hoke's brig., 227. 
Rodes's div., 206 n., 215, 216, 
218 n„ 263, 264. 
Daniel's brig., 264; Doles's brig., 
263; Battle's brig., 263. 
Johnson's div., 263. 
Jones's brig., 263. 
Jackson's Corps, 185, 186, 190. 
Artillery: Carter's battalion, 215; Mc- 
intosh's and Pegram's battalions, 
212. 
Armies, Federal: 

Army of North-eastern Virginia (Mc- 
Dowell), 65-72, 74-76, 78, 79. 
Army of the Potomac (McCIellan, Burn- 
side, Hooker, Meade), 88, 91 n., 94, 
97, 98, 102, 104-106, 108, 110, 112- 
114, 116-121, 130, 142, 149, 166-168, 
176, 191-193, 201 n., 202, 206, 212 n., 
221, 222, 224, 226, 229-232, 238 n.. 



313 



314 



INDEX 



239, 248, 249, 254, 255, 201, 274, 
275, 289 n. 

Before organization into corps: 
Heintzelman's div., 119. 

Hooker's div., 119. 
McDowell's div., 82, 94. 

Wadsimrth's brig., 81-91, 109- 
111, 109: Keyes's brig., 92. 
Blenker's div., 110, 117. 
After organization into corps: 

First Corps, 100, 108, 171, 175, 176, 
187-190, 194-199, 201-203, 
205 n., 200, 213, 215-219, 
221-220 n„ 230-232, 235, 230, 
250. 
1st Div. (Wadsivorth), 168-171, 

177-230, 247. 
At Chaneellorsvillc: 

1st Brig. (Phelps), 170, 170, 
177; 2d Brig. (Cutler), 171, 
188, 194; 3d Brig. (Paul), 
170, 175 n., 187, 194; 4th 
Brig. (Meredith, Iron Bri- 
gade), 170, 170, 177, 181, 
183, 189 n., 194, 195. 
At Gettysburg: 

1st Brig. (Meredith, Iron 
Brigade), 209-211, 213,215- 
217, 219, 225; 2d Brig. (Cut- 
ler). 208-210, 213, 215, 217, 
223-225. 
2d Div. (Robinson), 168, 214, 
223. 

1st Brig. (Paul), 214, 217, 219, 
223; 2d Brig. (Baxter), 214- 
217. 
3d Div. (Doubleday, Rowley), 
168, 175, 213. 

1st Brig. (Biddlc), 213, 216; 
2d Brig. (Stone), 213, 219. 
Artillery: 2d Maine (Hall), 208- 
210, 212, 214, 225; 5th Maine 
(Stevens), 219, 220, 223; Bat- 
tery B, 4th U. S. (Stewart), 
171, 219-221, 224, 200, 264, 
265 n.; Battery L, 1st N. Y. 
(Reynolds), 187-189 n. 
Second Corps, 100, 119, 249, 258, 
261 n., 267-272, 273 n., 275, 279, 
284 n. 
2d Div. (Gibbon), 284 n. 

1st lirig. (Webb), 273 n., 277- 
279. 
3d Div. (Birney), 273, 274, 277, 
284 n. 
1st Brig. (Ward), 279. 



Third Corps, 100, 190, 194, 198 n., 

200 n., 224. 
Fourth Corps, 100. 
Fifth Corps, 106, 115, 119, 122, 108, 
226 n., 249-251, 250-258, 201 n., 
262 n., 265, 267, 268, 277. 
1st Div. (Griffin), 258-263. 

3d Brig. (Bartlett), 263, 264. 
2d Div. (Robinson), 260, 268. 
2d Brig. (Baxter), 268, 269. 
3d Brig. (Denison), 2G0. 
3d Div. (Crawford), 258-261, 
262 n., 271. 

1st Brig. (McCandless), 261. 
4th Div. (Wadswortli), 249, 256- 
284. 

1st Brig. (Cutler, Iron Brig- 
ade), 250, 200, 262-265, 

269, 278, 281; 2d Brig. 
(Rice), 250, 200, 261, 264, 
265, 273 n.; 3d Brig. 
(Stone), 250, 260, 204, 265, 

270, 270, 283. 
Artillery: 1st N. Y. (Breck), 260, 

265 n.; Battery B, 4th U. S. 
(Stewart), 260, 204, 265. 
Sixth Corps, 183, 249, 258, 261 n., 
266, 267. 
1st Div. (Brooks), 183, 185 n., 

(Wright), 261 n. 
2d Div. (Getty), 267-269, 273, 
278. 

4th Brig. (Eustis), 282. 
Ninth Corps, 249, 271, 278, 279, 
282. 

1st Div., 1st Brig. (Carruth), 
279, 280, 280. 
Eleventh Corps, 190, 194, 198 n., 
199, 202, 205 n., 200 n., 214, 
215, 218, 223. 
Twelfth Corps, 200 n., 222, 224,227. 
2d Div., 3d Brig. (Greene), 227. 
Cavnlry Corps: 

1st Div. (Buford), 202, 204, 

206 n., 208, 222 n., 235 n., 

236 n.; Tidball's battery, 208, 

212, 213. 

1st Div. (Torbert), 252 n., 282. 

3d Div. (Kilpatrick), 286 n. 

Army for the Defence of Washington, 

100-108, 110-123, 128, 301-304. 
Army of the Rappahannock (McDow- 
ell), 124-128. 

Geary's command, 124, 125, 127. 
Army of the Shenandoah (Banks), 
121 n., 124, 126, 128. 
2d Div. (Shields), 124, 125. 



INDEX 



315 



Army of Virginia (Pope), 128, 148, 149. 
Astor, J. J., 6. 

Atkinson, C. F., quoted, 277. 
Atlantic, steamship, 32, 33. 
Augur, Maj.-Gen. C. C, 80 n. 
Austin, E., 28 n. 
Austin, Emmeline. See Mrs. W. W. 

Wadsworth. 



B 



Bull Run, .second battle of, 148, 150, 153, 
162. 

Burden, Miss. See Mrs. C. F. Wads- 
worth. 

Burnside, Maj.-Gen. A. E., 71, 80 n., 
121 n., 166, 167, 173, 249, 271, 278, 279, 
282. 

Butler, B. F. (of New York), 36 n., 39. 

Butler, Maj.-Gen. B. F., 59, 64 n., 132. 

Butterfield, Maj.-Gen. D., 184, 185, 198. 



Banks, Maj.-Gen. N. P., 64 n., 80 n., 106, 

108, 115, 117, 119, 121 n., 122, 124-126, 

146 n., 304. 
Barlow, Brig.-Gen. F. C., 215. 
Barnard, Brig.-Gen. J. G., 69. 
Barnburners, 35, 38-42, 44, 48, 50, 150. 
Barney, H., 51, 149, 154, 155. 
Barry, Brig.-Gen. W. F., 301, 302. 
Bartlett, Brig.-Gen. J. J., 263, 264. 
Bartlett, Col. W. F., 280. 
Baxter, Brig.-Gen. H., 214-216, 268, 269. 
Beauregard, Gen. G. T., 69, 70, 72, 93. 
Benham, Brig.-Gen. H. W., 180. 
Bennett, J. G., 152. 
Benning, Brig.-Gen. H. L., 276. 
Benton, T. H., 36. 
Biddle, Col. C, 213. 
Big Tree, Indian Chief, 9. 
Big Tree, later Geneseo, 7, 8, 9 n., 11, 25. 
Birney, Maj.-Gen. D. B., 273, 274, 277, 

284 n. 
Blackburn's Ford, skirmish at, 69, 70. 
"Black Horse Cavalry," 75. 
Black Republicans, 46, 50-53, 108, 148, 

152, 155, 164. 
Blair, M., 148. 

Blenker, Brig.-Gen. L., 116, 117. 
Bragg, Col. E. S., 170, 171 n., 181, 183, 

189 n., 192 n., 251, 263. 
Braintree Company, 293. 
Brandy Station, battle of, 193. 
Brimmer, Martin, 20 n., 23 n., 28. 
Brimmer, Martin, Jr., 28. 
Brinley, C. A., 293 n. 
Brooks, Brig.-Gen. W. T. H., 183, 185. 
Bryant, W. C, 38, 48, 165. 
Buchanan, A., 26. 
Buchanan, J., 36, 46. 
Buell, Capt. A. L. (The Cannoneer), 

171 n., 220. 
Buffalo Tigers, 146. 
Buford, Brig.-Gen. J., 204, 206, 208, 

222 n., 223, 235 n., 236 n. 
Bull Run, first battle of, 67, 68, 71-79, 111, 

192. 



Calef, Lieut. J. H., 208 n., 212, 213. 

Cambreling, C. C, 39. 

Cameron, Col. J., 77. 

Cameron, S., 58, 61, 64, 76, 77, 78, 103. 

Campbell, W. M., 93 n. 

Carlisle, Earl of, 26. 

Carruth, Col. S., 279, 280, 286. 

Carttcr, Judge, 140 n. 

Cass, L., 37, 41, 42. 

Chancellorsville, battle of, 142, 168, 177, 

186, 187, 190-192, 194, 218, 237, 252, 

258, 282. 
Chandler, Senator Z., 304. 
Charter Oak, 2, 294. 
Chartres, Due de, 98 n. 
Chase, S. P., 50, 51, 106 n., 149, 154, 155, 

104. 
Chattanooga, battle of, 247. 
Chicago Convention of 1860, 48, 152. 
Chickamauga, battle of, 245. 
Circuit Court of D. C, 130, 131, 135, 136, 

139, 140 n. 
Clark, M. H., 47. 
Cleveland, H. R., 19, 23. 
Cold Harbor, battle of, 252 n. 
Commissioners under the Fugitive Slave 

Law, 135-140. 
Committee on the Conduct of the War, 

98, 99, 120. 
Compromise of 18.50, 38, 44. 
Confiscation Act of 1861, 132, 135, 140. 
Confiscation Act of 1862, 139 n„ 141. 
Conscience Whigs, 42. 
Contrabands, 132, 133, 138, 158. 
Cooper Union speech, 158-163. 
Cope, Capt. E. B., 273 n., 277. 
Copperheads, 80. 

Court of Inquiry at Louisville, 245-247. 
Crawford, Brig.-Gen. S. W., 258, 262 n., 

266, 267 n., 271. 
Crittenden, Maj.-Gen. T. L., 245. 
Cutler, Brig.-Gen. L., 171, 188, 194, 208- 

210, 213, 215-217, 223-225, 250, 260, 

263-265, 269, 278, 281. 



316 



INDEX 



D 



Dana, C. A., SO. 

Davis, Jefferson, 84. 

Davison, Lieut., 220, 221. 

Dawes, Lieut.-Col. R. A., 170, 171 n., 172, 

191 n., 192 n„ 193, 211, 213, 250. 
Dean, J., 139, 141 n. 
Democratic-Republicans, 45-47, 49. 
Departments : 

Gulf, 146 n., 242. 

Mississippi, 107. 

Mountain, 107, 116, 124, 126, 128. 

Potomac, 107. 

Rappahannock, 121, 128. 

Shenandoah, 121 n., 128. 

Tennessee, 242. 
Dicey, E., 128, 133 n. 
Dix, Maj.-Gen. J. A., 42, 62-64, 121 n., 

143, 152, 155-157, 304. 
Dodge, W. E., 52 n. 
Doubleday, Maj.-Gen. A., 168, 175, 194, 

207, 209, 210, 212, 214, 215, 217-219, 

221, 225, 226, 232. 
Draper, S., 47, 58. 
Dred Scott decision, 38. 
Duncan, Mr. and Mrs. B., 27. 
Dunmore, Earl of, 26. 

E 

Early, Maj.-Gen. J. A., 206 n., 215, 218 n., 

264. 
Eaton, Chaplain J., 240, 243. 
Edwards, Col. O., 283. 
Ellsworth, Capt. T. E., 168, 209, 241. 
Elzey, Col. A., 74. 
Emancipation, 134-136, 139 n., 140, 147, 

148, 150, 152, 154, 155, 164, 239, 307- 

309. 
Erie Canal, 14, 295. 
Eustis, Brig.-Gen. H. L., 282. 
Evarts, W. M., 51. 
Ewell, Lieut.-Gen. R. S., 195, 198, 204, 

206, 212 n., 222-224, 255, 259, 261, 

262 n., 265, 271. 

F 

Fairchild, Col. L., 170, 171 n. 
Felton, C. C, 19, 23. 
Felton, S. M., 57, 58. 
Fessenden, W. P., 103. 
Field, Maj.-Gen. C. W., 274, 277. 
Field, D. D., 39, 46, 48, 52, 53 n. 
Fisher, Judge, 140 n. 
Fitzhugh's Crossing, 178-189. 



Five Forks, battle of, 246 n., 262 n. 

"Five of Clubs," 23. 

Fletcher, Gov. Benj., 2, 3. 

Flying Harte, The, 293. 

Franklin, Maj.-Gen. W. B., 74, 102, 108. 

Fredericksburg, battle of, 166, 167, 178. 

Free Democracy, 42. 

Free-soilers, 35, 42, 43. 

Fremont, Maj.-Gen. J. C, 46, 107, 108, 

116, 121 n., 124, 126. 
French, Maj.-Gen. W. H., 233, 236. 
Frey, Sergeant, 276. 
Fry, Capt. J. B., 69. 
Fugitive Slave Law, 135-137, 139, 140, 

141 n., 147, 158. 



Gainesville, battle of, 171. 

Gates, Lieut.-Col. T., 85, 87. 

Gay, S. H., 148. 

Geary, Brig.-Gen. J. W., 124, 125, 127. 

Getty, Brig.-Gen. G. W., 267-269, 273, 

277, 278. 
Gettysburg, battle of, 170, 189, 194, 204, 

230, 248, 250, 256, 260, 266, 267, 277, 

283. 
Gibbon, Brig.-Gen. J., 284 n. 
Gookin, D., 293. 
Grant, Gen. U. S., 240, 247-249, 251, 252, 

254, 255, 257, 259, 261, 262 n., 265, 266, 

268, 269 n., 270, 272 n., 274, 278, 284 n., 

289. 
Greeley, H., 48, 50, 51, 147, 152, 155, 156. 
Greene, Brig.-Gen. G. S., 227. 
Greene, Maj.-Gen. N., 4, 5. 
Gregg, Brig.-Gen. J., 274, 275. 
Gregory, Maj. (Harris Light Cavalry), 96. 
Griffin, Brig.-Gen. C, 73, 258-263, 266. 
Grimes, Senator J., 103. 
Gurowski, Count, 104, 127 n., 147, 244. 



II 



Hall, Capt. J. A., 208-210, 212, 214, 225. 
Halleck, Maj.-Gen. H. W., 107, 149, 

201 n., 231, 247. 
Hamlin, H., 237. 
Hancock, Maj.-Gen. W. S., 205 n., 223, 

224, 226, 234, 249, 250 n., 258, 261 n., 

267-273, 275, 278, 279, 281, 282 n., 

284 n., 289. 
"Hards," 44, 45. 
Harris, I, 47. 
Harvard College, 19, 22. 
Haupt, H., 149, 177. 
Hawthorne, N., 54. 



INDEX 



317 



Hay, J., 105, 236. 
Hays, Brig.-Gen. W., 233, 236. 
Heintzelman, Brig.-Gen. S. P., 106, 119. 
Henderson, G. F. R., quoted, 115, 196, 

229, 238. 
Hermann, 253. 
Hertford, Lord, 24, 30. 
Heth, Maj.-Gen. H., 194, 202, 206 n., 208, 

212 n„ 216, 222, 267, 269. 
Higgins, J., 146. 
Hill, Lieut.-Gen. A. P., 198, 206 n., 216, 

222, 223, 235 n., 259, 261 n., 267-272. 
Hill, A. S., 147, 148. 
Hitchcock, Maj.-Gen. E. A., 108, 113, 

116, 120. 
Hoffman, M., 299. 
Holland Land Company, 9 n. 
Hooker, Maj.-Gen. J., 119, 147, 173-175, 

177, 184-187, 190-193, 195-198, 201. 
Hooker, T., 1, 293, 294. 
Howard, Maj.-Gen. O. O., 207, 214-216, 

218, 223, 225, 227, 233, 234 n., 237. 
Howe, S. G., 240. 
Howe, Sir W., 24 n. 
Humphreys, Maj.-Gen. A. A., 232, 234, 

235 n., 254, 255, 280, 289. 
Hunkers, 35, 38-40, 44. 
Hunter, Maj.-Gen. D., 121 n., 237. 
Huntington, Lieut. H. J., 192 n. 



Indians, 7-10 n., 14 n., 244. 

Irish famine, 29. 

Iron Brigade, 170, 176, 177, 181, 183, 
189 n., 194, 195, 201, 209-211, 213, 
215-217, 219, 225, 250, 260, 262-265, 
269, 278, 281. 



Kearney, Maj.-Gen. P., 147. 

Kershaw, Maj.-Gen. J. B., 274, 277. 

Keyes, Maj.-Gen. E. D., 65, 106. 

Kill von Kull, 56, 59, 60. 

Kilpatrick, Brig.-Gen. J., 236 n. 

King, J. A., 47, 53. 

King, P., 39, 45, 47. 

King, R., 47. 

Kress, Brig.-Gen. J. A., 81, 89, 138, 181, 

189 n., 202, 218, 227. 
Krzyzanowski, Col. W., 215. 



Lafayette, Marquis de, 24, 91. 

Lamon, W. H., 131, 132, 136-139. 

Law, Brig.-Gen. E. M., 275, 276. 

Lee, Lieut.-Col. P., 93. 

Lee, Gen. R. E., 65, 125, 148-150, 153, 
167, 175, 177, 184-187, 189, 193, 195, 
196, 198, 201, 204, 206 n., 215, 222, 228- 
231, 233-238, 254, 255, 259, 261, 262 n.. 
265, 270, 272, 274, 275, 284 n., 285, 288. 

Liberty men, 42. 

Lincoln, A., 38, 48-51, 55, 58, 61, 62, 84, 
97, 98, 102-109, 113, 115-118, 120-122, 
124-128, 130-132, 134, 136, 138, 141, 
144, 145, 147-150, 152, 155, 156 n., 159- 
161, 163-165, 193, 196, 201 n., 231, 236, 
237, 240, 241, 244, 245 n., 247. 

Livermore, Col. T. L., quoted, 256, 261 n. 

"Lockjaw expedition," 106, 113. 

Longstreet, Lieut.-Gen. J., 184-187, 193, 
198, 254, 262 n., 265, 271, 272, 274, 277, 
279 n., 281, 282 n., 284 n., 285. 

Lyman, Col. T., quoted, 255-257, 271, 
273 n. 

Lynch, Althea, 138, 139. 



Jackson, Lieut.-Gen. T. J. ("Stonewall"), 
71, 72, 74, 115, 116, 124-127, 185, 186, 
190, 237, 258, 282. 

James, A. B., 53 n. 

Jefferson, T., 45, 299. 

Jenkins, Brig.-Gen. M., 284 n. 

Johnston, Gen. J. E., 70, 74, 77, 78 n., 83, 
93. 

Johnston, Prof. J. F. W., quoted, 17, 298. 

Julian, G. W., 43. 



Kane brothers, 13, 25. 
Kansas-Nebraska act and agitation, 
44, 45. 



M 

Manassas, battles of. See Bull Run. 

Marcy, W. L., 38. 

Marshall, Col. C, 285. 

Marye's Heights, attack on, 167. 

"M. B. G.," 170, 193, 250. 

McCandless, Col. W., 261. 

McClellan, Maj.-Gen. G. B., 82-84, 97- 

99, 101-109, 112-126, 143-145, 147- 

149, 153, 157, 166, 167, 301, 302, 304. 
McCook, Brig.-Gen. A. D., 245. 
McCracken, P., 142, 143, 288, 289. 
McDowell, Maj.-Gen. I., 65-76, 78, 79, 

81, 82, 94, 98, 99, 102, 105, 106, 110, 

121, 122, 124-127. 
McDowell court of inquiry, 168, 301, 302, 

304. 



318 



INDEX 



McGowan, Brig-Gen. S., 274. 

McKayc, J., 240. 

McKcan and Denniston, 23. 

McMillan, Capt. J., 145. 

Meade, Maj.-Gen. G. G., 1G8, 201, 202, 

205 n., 215, 223, 225-229, 231-233, 235- 

238, 248, 249, 255, 257-259, 261, 266- 

268, 273, 278, 279, 284 n., 289. 
Meigs, Brig.-Gen. M. C, 120 n., 148. 
Meneely, Col. C. H., 144, 166, 168, 183, 

234, 245 n. 
Meredith, Brig.-Gen. S., 171, 189 n. 
Milroy, Brig.-Gen. R. H., 196. 
Missouri Compromise, 44. 
Monteith, Capt. R., 271, 272, 277, 281, 

282. 
Morgan, Gov. E. D., 49, 61-64, 81, 150, 

156. 
Morpeth, Lord, 26. 
Morris, R., 7 n., 9 n., 12, 13. 
Morris, T., 13. 
Morrow, Col. H. A., 170, 171 n., 189 n., 

222. 
Motley, J. L., 23; quoted, 24, 34, 290. 
Murray, Hon. Charles Augustus, 26-28. 
Murray, Mrs. Charles Augustus. See 

Elizabeth Wadsworth. 
Murray, C. J., 27, 28, 30. 
Murray, Capt. H. A., 28. 



N 

Napoleon, 255. 

National Freedmen's Association, 133. 

Negley, Maj.-Gen. J. S., 245. 

Negroes, 90, 95-97, 129, 131-140, 142, 

154, 158, 239-244. 
Negro troops, 239, 242, 243. 
Newton, Maj.-Gen. J., 225, 226, 232, 236, 

237 n. 
Noyes, W. C, 50, 52, 53. 

O 

Olin, Judge, 140 n. 
Olustee, battle of, 245 n. 
Osborne, Col., 250. 
Otis, H. G., 31. 
Owen, R. D., 240. 



Packard, E. N., 49. 
Palmerston, Lord, 24. 
Paris, Comte de, 98. 
Patrick, Brig.-Gen. M. R., 169. 



Patterson, Maj.-Gen. R., 57. 

Paul, Brig.-Gen. G. R., 214, 217, 219, 223. 

Peace Conference, 51-53. 

Pcrrin. Brig.-Gen. A., 283. 

Phelps and Gorham purchase, 7. 

Pickett, Maj.-Gen. G. E., 228, 277. 

Pierrepont, E., 165 n. 

Pinkerton, A., 104. 

Pleasonton, Maj.-Gen. A., 232,233,234 n., 

236. 
Polk, J. K., 36-38. 

Pope, Maj.-Gen. J., 128, 148, 149, 153. 
Porter, Col. A., 73, 130. 
Porter, Maj.-Gen. F. J., 102. 



B 



Radicals (Democrats), 35, 38, 40, 45; 
(Black Republicans), 46, 50, 52, 53, 108, 
148, 152, 155, 164. 
Rawlins, Brig.-Gen. J. A., 266, 270. 
Raymond, H. J., 156, 308. 
Rebel yell, 74, 282. 
Reconstruction period, 244. 
Regiments, Confederate: 

6ist Ga., 266 n.; 2d Miss., 211; 26th 
N. C, 217; 1st Va. Cav., 93. 
Regiments, Federal: 

Ind.: 7th, 171, 224, 225 n., 263; 19th, 

170. 
Mass.: 6th, 55; 20th, 256, 279, 280; 
37th, 282, 283; 54th, 239; 56th, 
286; 57th, 280, 281. 
Mich.: 7th, 178; 24th, 170, 175, 181, 

182, 189 n., 191 n., 217, 222, 225. 
New York (Militia): 7th, 55, 56; 8th, 
72, 73; 14th (Brooklyn), see 84th 
Vols.; 20th (Ulster Guards), see 
80th Vols. (Volunteers), 12th, 81 
13th, 73; 20th, Sin.; 2ist, 81,88 
109, 110; 23d, 81; 35th, 81, 82 
37th, 119; 55th, 83; 76th, 1:37 
139, 171, 174; 80th, 85-87, 89 
84th, 93, 171, 175, 189 n„ 211 n. 
95th, 171, 211 n.; 104th (Wads- 
worth Guards), 80 n.; Il6th, 146 n.; 
147th, 171, 209, 211; 2d Cav. 
(Harris Light), 96. 
Penn.: 7th (Reserve), 266 n.; Ilth, 
220; 56th, 171; 137th, 187; 150th, 
276. 
Wis.: 2d, 170, 182, 258; 6th, 170, 
176, 181, 183, 189 n., 210, 213, 220, 
229, 251, 262, 263, 271; 7th, 170. 
Renwick, J., quoted, 8, 16, 295. 
Reynolds, Maj.-Gen. J. F., 167, 168, 180, 
181, 184-180, 1S8, 190, 194, 195, 197, 



INDEX 



319 



198, 201, 204, 205, 207-212, 216, 224, 

226, 234. 
Rhodes, J. F„ quoted, 148, 155, 165. 
Rice, Brig.-Gen. J. C, 250, 260, 261, 264, 

265, 273 n., 277. 
Richardson, Brig.-Gen. I. B., 119. 
Ricketts, Brig.-Gen. J. B., 73. 
Ripley, Brig.-Gen. J. W., 120 n., 148. 
Ritchie, Capt. Montgomery, 31, 76, 77, 

79, 80, 289. 
Ritchie, Mrs. Montgomery. See Cor- 
nelia Wadsworth, daughter of J. S. W. 
Robinson, Brig.-Gen. J. C., 168, 214, 223, 

260, 268. 
Rochambeau, Count, 5, 24. 
Rodes, Maj.-Gen. R. E., 206 n., 215, 216, 

218 n., 263, 264. 
Rogers, Maj. E. M., 176, 183, 270 n., 282, 

284. 
Rogers, S., 26. 
Ropes, J. C quoted, 116. 
Russell, W. H., 68, 79, 85. 90. 



Scales, Brig.-Gen. A. M., 217, 219, 220, 
221 n., 260. 

Schaff. Capt. M., 260; quoted, 258, 262. 

Schieffelin, J., 14 n. 

Schimmelfennig, Brig.-Gen. A., 215. 

Scott, Maj.-Gen. W., 10 n., 19, 67, 98. 

Sedgwick, Maj.-Gen. J., 177, 185, 186, 
191, 233, 236, 237 n., 249, 258, 267. 

Seward, W. H., 20, 38, 46, 48-51, 132 n., 
152, 154, 164. 

Seymour, H., 152, 154, 156, 157, 161-165. 

Shaw, Col. R. G., 239. 

Sherman, Lieut.-Gen. W. T., 71, 74. 

Shields, Brig.-Gen. J., 124, 125. 

Sickles, Maj.-Gen. D. E., 190, 207, 234. 

Slocum, Maj.-Gen. H. W., 233, 236. 

Smith, Maj.-Gen. G. W., 93. 

Smith, J. C, 37-39, 52, 53 n., 63, 65, 150, 
151. 

"Softs," 44, 45. 

Sorrel, Lieut.-Col. M. L., 285. 

South Mountain, battle of, 201. 

Spotswood, A., 253. 

Stanton, E. M., 103-105, 107-110, 113- 
116, 118, 120, 121, 123-128, 143-145, 
148-151, 166, 240, 241, 242 n., 301, 303. 

Stanton, H. B., quoted, 40, 48, 50. 

Stark, Gen. J., 73. 

Stewart, Lieut. J., 171, 219, 220, 260, 264, 
265 n. 

Stone, Elizabeth. See Mrs. W. Wads- 
worth. 



Stone, Col. Roy, 213, 219, 250, 260, 264, 

265, 276. 
Stone, Rev. S., 294. 

Stuart, Gen. J. E. B., 77, 90, 93 n., 193. 
Sturgis, Brig.-Gen. S. D., 128. 
Sumner, C, 23, 26, 54, 96, 102, 136 n., 

139 n., 305 n. 
Sumner, Maj.-Gen. E. V., 106, 119. 
Sumter, Fort, 54, 55, 168 
Swan, Col. W. W., quoted, 256, 267. 
Sweetser, S., 19. 
Sykes, Maj.-Gen. G., 233, 236. 



Taylor, J. P., 120 n. 

Texas, annexation of, 36, 38. 

Thomas, Adj.-Gen. L., 120, 239, 240, 242. 

Thomson, J. E., 58. 

Tilden, S. J., 39. 

Torbert, Brig.-Gen. A. T. A., 252 n., 282. 

Totten, Brig.-Gen. J. G., 120 n. 

Townsend, Adj.-Gen. E. D., quoted, 60 n. 

Trevelyan, Sir G. O., 138. 

Trevylian Station, engagement at, 252 n. 

de Trobriand, Col. R., 83-85. 

Tyler, Brig.-Gen. D., 69-72. 







Union Defence Committee, 55-58, 60, 64. 
Upton, C. H., 83, 94; quoted, 95. 
Upton's Hill, 82, 83, 85, 90, 92-94, 97, 112, 

169, 173. 
Ulster Guard, 85. 



Van Buren, M.. 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 44, 49. 
Van Buren, "Prince John," 26, 35, 40, 

156, 161. 
Van Rensselaer, Gen. S., 10 n. 
Vedder, Paymaster, 241. 
Vicksburg, surrender of, 239, 247. 
Von Amsberg, Col. G., 215. 
Von Gilsa, Col. L., 215. 



w 

Wade, B., 98. 

Wadsworth, Charles Frederick, 24, 30, 31, 

145, 146, 246, 247. 
Wadsworth, Mrs. C. F., 246, 247. 
Wadsworth, Cornelia (sister of J. S. W.). 

22 n., 23. 



320 



INDEX 



Wadsworth, Cornelia (daughter of J. S. 
W.). 24 n., 80, 31, 78-80, 112, IIS, 
189 n., 191. 

Wadsworth, Craig Wharton, 24 n., 80-82, 
167, 169, 173, 182, 211, 224, 252, 282. 

Wadsworth, Rev. Daniel, 293 n. 

Wadsworth, Daniel, 6. 

Wadsworth, Elizabeth (Mrs. Murray, 
sister of J. S. W.), 22 n., 25-27, 30, 32, 
34, 37. 

Wadsworth, Elizabeth (daughter of J. S. 
W.), 24 n., 112, 252. 

Wadsworth, Harriet, 22 n., 23. 

Wadsworth, Herbert, 28 n. 

Wadsworth, Squire James (1700P-1777), 
293 n. 

Wadsworth, Gen. James (1730-1817), 
2-4. 

Wadsworth, James (1768-1844), 5-9, 11- 
29, 35, 37, 65, 244, 295-297. 

Wadsworth, Mrs. J., 13, 14, 22, 23. 

WADSWORTH, J. S., 1, 14, 21; birth, 22; 
education, 22, 23; marriage, 23, 24; 
house at Geneseo, 24, 30; trips abroad, 
24, 27, 30, 34; as a farmer, 28, 29, 31-33, 
298; generosity, 29, 32, 89, 199, 251; 
home life, 33, 34, 246; early affiliations 
with Democrats, 35-38; opposition to 
slavery, 37-39, 42-44; in the Barn- 
burner movement, 38-41; in the Free- 
soil campaign of 1848, 42, 43; elector at 
large, 42, 47 n., 49; breaks with Demo- 
crats, 44, 45; with the Democratic-Re- 
publicans, 45, 46; joins Republicans, 46; 
associated with Radical wing, 46, 47; 
opposes nomination of Seward, 48, 49; 
refuses to be candidate for Republican 
nomination for governor in 1860, 49, 
150; availability for Lincoln's cabinet, 
50; interest in N. Y. appointments, 50, 
51; member of Peace Conference, 51- 
53; member of executive committee of 
Union Defense Committee, 55; hires 
Kill von Kull, 56; journey to Annapolis, 
57-59; to Washington, 60, 61; opinion 
of Lincoln, 58, 61, 62, 148, 159, 160, 163, 
164; offered commission as major-gen- 
eral, 62-64; desire to enter the army, 64, 
65; characteristics as a soldier, 66, 72, 
73, 75, 79, 89, 94, 189, 228, 238, 248, 
280, 289, 290; aide to McDowell, 66; at 
Blackburn's Ford, 69; at Bull Run, 70- 
75, 79; care of wounded, 75-77, 80; 
bearer of flag of truce, 77, 80; appoint- 
ment as brigadier-general, 78, 80, 81; 
brigade commander, 81-1 1 1 ; at Upton's 
Hill, 83-110, 112; care of his men, 86, 



87, 89, 197, 199, 200, 251; reconnoitring, 
91-93; sends out foraging parties, 91- 
94; care of Virginians, 94, 95; care of 
negroes, 95-97, 133-140; estimate of 
strength of Confederates at Manassas, 
97, 99, 100, 104, 105; testimony before 
committee on conduct of the war, 99- 
101, .121, 233, 234; appointed Military 
Governor of Washington, 107-112; ad- 
vance-to Manassas, 109, 110, 113; in 
charge of defence of Washington, 1 17— 
123, 125-128. 301-304; struggle with 
courts in D. of C, 132-140; his military 
protections, 134, 136-138; treatment of 
political prisoners, 142, 143, 288; ar- 
ranges exchange of prisoners, 143; care 
of sick and wounded, 143-145; concern 
for safety of Washington after Second 
Bull Run, 148-150; availabilit3' as candi- 
date for governor in 1862, 150-155; 
nominated, 155, 156; partisan attacks 
upon, 156, 157; Cooper Union speech, 
158-163; defeated, 164-166; return to 
Army of the Potomac, 166-168; assigned 
to command 1st Div., First Corps, 168; 
his staff, 169; his command, 169-171; in 
camp at Belle Plain, 171, 172; sends out 
foraging parties, 173; prepares for 
spring campaign, 174, 175; quells 
mutiny, 176, 177; at Fitzhugh's Cross- 
ing, 178-189; his generosity, 183; 
at Chancellorsville, 190-192; trip to 
Geneseo, 193; on the march to Gettys- 
burg, 194-205; at Gettysburg, July 1, 
205-225; July 2, 226-228; July 3, 228, 
229; in pursuit of Lee, 230, 231; at 
Meade's council of war, 232-234; cha- 
grin at Lee's escape, 236-238; his pay 
as brigadier-general, 241; inspects con- 
dition of freedmen in Mississippi Valley, 
241-243; plans for the future of the 
freedmen, 244; serves on court of in- 
quiry at Louisville, 245, 246; rejoins 
Army of the Potomac, 248, 249; prep- 
arations for campaign, 249-252; enters 
the Wilderness, 256-258; in battle of the 
Wilderness, May 5, 259-271; May 6, 
272-284; mortally wounded, 2S4, 285; in 
Confederate hospital, 286-288; death, 
288; recovery of his body and burial, 
289; his services, 289, 290. 
Letters: 

to Martin Van Buren, 36. 

to E. N. Packard, 49. 

to Simeon Draper, 57. 

to E. D. Morgan, 61, 63. 

to Capt. Woods, 73. 



INDEX 



321 



to Charles Sumner, 96, 102. 
to E. M. Stanton, 118. 
to C. F. Wadsworth, 146. 
to J. C. Smith, 151, 153. 
to J. W. Wadsworth, 166, 173, 245. 
to Miss Burden, 246. 
to Mrs. J. S. Wadsworth, 252. 
to the New York Times, 302. 
to H. J. Raymond, 308. 
Speeches: 

at Syracuse, 1856, 299. 
at Washington, 1862, 305. 
at Cooper Union, 1862, 158-163. 
Wadsworth, Mrs. J. S., 23-25, 34, 37, 82» 

85, 112, 146, 246, 2.52, 289. 
Wadsworth, James Wolcott, 24 n., 30, 

166, 173, 226 n., 245, 246 n., 252, 285. 
Wadsworth, Col. Jeremiah, 2, 4-7, 9 n., 

12, 13, 24, 294. 
Wadsworth, John Noyes, 1, 5, 8 n. 
Wadsworth, John Noyes, Jr., 1, 8 n. 
Wadsworth, Capt. Joseph, 2, 3, 294. 
Wadsworth, Nancy W., 24 n., 30, 252. 
Wadsworth, William (1595-1675), 1, 2, 

293, 294. 
Wadsworth, Mrs. W., 294. 
Wadsworth, William (General Bill), 1, 5, 

8-10, 13, 23, 79 n. 
Wadsworth, William Austin, 28 n., 293 n., 

294. 
Wadsworth, William W., 22 n., 27, 

28 n. 
Wadsworth, Mrs. W. W., 28, 78, 112. 
Wadsworth homestead, 9 n., 25. 
Wagner, Port, assault on, 239. 
Wainwright, Col. C. S., 218, 265 n. 
Ward, Brig-Gen. J. H. H., 279. 
Warren, Maj.-Gen. G. K., 223, 232-234, 



236, 246 n., 249, 250, 256-262 n., 265- 
269, 271-273 n., 277, 278 n. 

Washburne, E. B., 269 n., 270. 

Washington, city of, described, 128, 129. 

Washington, G., 5-7, 13, 91. 

Wayne, Brig.-Gen. A., 73. 

Webb, Brig.-Gen. A. S., 273 n., 277-279, 
282. 

Webster, D., 9 n., 23. 

Weed, T., 20, 25, 46, 48, 51, 60, 152, 154, 
155, 158, 165. 

Welles, G„ 156 n. 

Wharton, John, 24 n. 

Wharton, Joseph, 24 n. 

Wharton, Mary C. See Mrs. J. S. Wads- 
worth. 

Wheat midge, 31. 

Whiting, W., 236. 

Wilcox, Maj.-Gen. C. M., 267, 269, 270. 

Wilderness, battle of, 142, 259-284. 

Wilmot Proviso, 39, 41. 

Wilson, H., 130-132. 

Wolcott, Naomi. See Mrs. J. Wads- 
worth. 

Wolcott, O., 13. 

Wolcott, S., 13. 

Woods, Capt., 73. 

Woodward, G. M., 258. 

Wool, Maj.-Gen. J. E., 105 n., 121 n. 

Wright, Brig.-Gen. H. G., 261 n. 

Wright, S., 36-40, 293. 

Wylie, Judge, 140 n. 



Yale College, 3, 6. 
Yale Law School, 23. 
Young, S., 299. 



1 



A PARTIAL TA 



1st generation 



2d generation 



3d generation 



4th generation 



Deacon JOHN WADSWORTH, 
of Farmington, 

1662-1718. 
Seven children. 



ELIZABETH STANLEY, 

daughter of 

John Stanley, of ■ 

Died 1713. 



1733-4 
Reverend DANIEL WADSWORTH, = ABIGAIL TALCOTT, 



of Hartford. Yale, 1726. 

1704-1717. 

Six children 



of Hartford, 

daughter of 

Governor Talcott, 

1707-1773. 



5th generation Colonel JEREMIAH WADSWORTH, — MEHITABEL RUSSELL, 



of Hartford, 

1743-1804. 

Three children. 



of Middletown, 
1734-1817. 



6th generation 



1794 
DANIEL WADSWORTH, = FAITH TRUMBULL, 

of Hartford, daughter of 

1771-1848. second Governor Trumbull. 

No children. 17C0-1846 



7th generation 






1st generation 



2d generation 



3d generation 



4th generation 



A PARTIAL TABLE OF THE DESCENDANTS OF WILLIAM WADSWORTH, OFHARTFORD 

1624 (?) 1644 
(?) = WILLIAM WADSWORTH, = ELIZABETH STONE, 



(first w ife) 



Four children. 



of Hartford, 
1595(?)-1675. 
Ten children. 



of Hartford, 
16— (?)-1682. 
Six children. 



1656 (?) 
JOHN WADSWORTH, = SARAH STANLEY, 



~~l 



of Farmington, 

1625(?)-1689. 
Nine children. 



of Hartford. 
Died 1718. 



L696 



Deacon JOHN WADSWORTH, 

of Farmington, 

10(12-1718. 
Seven children. 



ELIZABETH STANLEY, 

daughter of 

John Stanley, of 

Died 1713. 



1699 (?) 
Colonel JAMES WADSWORTH, = RUTH N 



wtun JOSEPH WADSWORTH. 
of Hartford, 
1648(?)-1730(?). 



:s. 



of Durham, 
1677-1756. 
One child. 



of Lyn 
1678-11 



1733-4 
Reverend DANIEL WADSWORTH, = ABIGAIL TALCOTT, 



1728 (?) 
Squire JAMES WADSWORTH, = ABIGAIL n NFIELD, 



of Hartford. Yale, 
1704-1747. 
Six children. 



1726. 



1764 



5th generation Colonel JEREMIAH WADSWORTH, 

of Hartford, 

1743-1804. 

Three children. 



of Hartford, 

daughter of 

Governor Talcott, 

1707-1773. 

MEHITABEL RUSSELL, 

of Middletown, 
1734-1817. 



of Durham, 

1700(?)-1777. 

Three children. 



ol Gill ', 
1702-148. 



1755 (?) 
General JAMES WADSWORTH, = CATHARINE GUERNSEY, 
of Durham. Yale, 1748. 1732-1813. 

1730-1817. 
Two children died in infancy. 



1757 



JOHN NOES WADSWORTH, 

if Durham, 
'7P/2-1787. 
cc children. 



ESTHER PARSONS. 

of Durham, 

1732 1799. 



6th generation 



7th generation 



1794 
DANIEL WADSWORTH, = FAITH TRUMBULL, 

of Hartford, daughter of 

1771-1848. second Governor Trumbull. 

No children. 1769-1846 



1804 



JOHN NOYES WADSWORTH, 

of Durham, 
1758-1814. 



WILLIAM WAD WORTH, 
of Genese), 
1761-1831. 



JAMES WADSWORTH, 
of Geneseo, 

1768-1844. 
Five children. 



NAOMI WOLCOTT, 

of East Windsor, 
1777 1831. 



1834 






JAMES SAMUEL WADSWORTH, 

of Geneseo, 
1807-1864. 
Six children. 



MARY CRAIG WHARTON, 
of Philadelphia, 

1812-1871. 



HARTFORD 



aptaix JOSEPH WADSWORTH. 
of Hartford, 
1648(?)-17S0(?). 



ENFIELD, 

Jford, 
1748. 



1757 
VES WADSWORTH, = ESTHER PARSONS, 

f Durham, 



ee cl drtn. 



of Durham. 
1732-1799. 



WORTH, 



1804 
JAMES WADSWORTH, = NAOMI WOLCOTT, 



of Geneseo, 

1708-1844. 

Five children. 



of East Windsor, 
1777-1831. 



1834 



JAMES SAMUEL WADSWORTH, == MARY CRAIG WHARTON, 

of Geneseo, of Philadelphia, 

1807-1864. 18H-1874. 

Six children. 




Scale, of Mills 



Note:- Line of March from Fredericksburg U Gettysburg shown thus ^•— ••^•^ 



GENERAL MAP OF THE REGION BETWEEN GETTYSBURG, PA., AND 
FREDERICKSBURG, VA. 



ft& if/ r m^ s /j 

^<y GETTYSBURG I 






tf 












^ M/$M* — y f 

^A 3ii8B.Jk U\ / 

w =A i* I I Or - -■'■■ 5ii « .. 

^( o\^ 3 £^ w-*- •Lewasrown 



rVg, 



MASON 



lotnsville 






Har 



'Per* Fe 






Winchester 



¥ 



% 






fli f)M[^^#^r Uesfaurftj^- VkTEdwards Ferry 



/Sfrasburj Oj 






fff 



a: a* 



.#■3* 



V n 5 p*"£,T- ^rvv; /" 'V! 

i? j; •» V WURRCNTOH 





£)** V>°* / UiiVon'sHi'llPX^^jR?/^/ 

ODi?<P rf'N'S f Munson'iHill • ^KCfll V 1/ / 

S I ^ NS- /- .Fairfax C.N. %&}£' 

ijC»' -^SfeJ^ V\" in 1 1 1 1 1 n i -« **j||f Alexandria 

-v- #? ^^tZji^^l^^ • 9 'F«,rfoV ifa^J 



Note:- Line of Maah from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg shown thus 



^t MAP OF THE REGION BETWEEN GETTYSBURG, PA., AND 
GENERAL MAP FRE DERICKSBURG, VA. 







' 



